


To the Harbormaster

by iphigenias



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Epistolary, Gift Giving, M/M, Period-Typical Handjobs, Poetry, Spanish flu, there's not much fun to be had in York
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:47:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24159901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iphigenias/pseuds/iphigenias
Summary: Corporal Barrow and Private Ellis first meet in 1916. It changes things.
Relationships: Thomas Barrow/Richard Ellis
Comments: 152
Kudos: 194





	1. Spring – Summer 1916

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to my life for the past week! i have a solid idea of where this fic is headed so hopefully updates aren't too slow in coming; i haven't written a properly chaptered fic since 2012, however, so i make no promises.
> 
> standard warnings for downton season 2 in this chapter; the first paragraph describes a graphic instance of animal death so if you would prefer to skip it, just jump down to paragraph two, starting with: "penny for your thoughts?"
> 
>  **edit 14/05:** i have edited the spelling of the fic title to accurately reflect the title of o'hara's poem, because americans are strange. i have also slightly altered the chapter title frankly because i forgot that spring/summer happens in the middle of the year in the northern hemisphere. blame my irish ancestors who emigrated to australia?
> 
>  **edit 23/11:** you may have noticed some edited chapter notes bc my twitter is now @[svnsvstvrk](https://twitter.com/svnsvstvrk) and it'll pretty much always be on priv but i accept most follow reqs. i am also no longer on tumblr. yes i do plan to finish this fic but could not tell you when that will happen so hold the fort~

I wanted to be sure to reach you;  
though my ship was on the way it got caught  
in some moorings. I am always tying up  
and then deciding to depart.

— Frank O'Hara, 'To the Harbormaster'

It’s raining. The duckboards are glazed in a layer of mud and give way beneath unsuspecting feet; already, a supply horse has drowned. She’d fallen to her knees in the muck, a noose of barbed wire wrapped around her front left leg—in the stifling darkness her blood was as black and slick as an oil spill. Richard had watched, numb, as her writhing twisted her body only deeper into the dank filth, head sinking into the pooled water. Soldiers and supply officers rushed to help but she was a solid mare and bleeding out besides; eventually a lieutenant stood, ran a hand through her mane, coming to rest on her trembling withers; pulled his pistol from his belt and fired, close to the skull. She subsided into the mud, cold and quiet. The rain hasn’t stopped since, and the walls of the trenches weep for it. Richard watches the downpour from the dugout and thinks of the wet soil in the flowerbeds his mother tends every Sunday. The roses must be about ready to bloom; they’d been budding when last she wrote.

“Penny for your thoughts?” says a voice to Richard’s left. He turns; it’s the same man who was in here when Richard arrived, waved him in out of the driving rain but said nothing, only smoked his cigarette down to the cherry and lit up another by the time Richard stopped paying attention.

“I doubt they’re worth that much,” Richard replies. The man huffs a soft laugh; leans forward into the lantern light, illuminating a sliver of pale skin and dark hair. There are deep shadows beneath his startlingly blue eyes and grime flecked along the side of his jaw Richard can see; it’s sharp even in the dimness, bone cut close to the skin.

“You’ve a low opinion of yourself…?”

“Ellis,” Richard replies. “Richard Ellis.”

“Barrow,” the man says. He offers Richard a cigarette. “How green are you then?”

“Three days on the front.”

Barrow lets out a low whistle. “No wonder you’re bloody shaking. That’ll pass, soon enough.” He exhales a plume of smoke. “Probably.”

Richard takes the offered light. “You’ve been here a while?”

“Since fourteen,” Barrow says, rolling his eyes at what he sees in Richard’s expression. “Don’t go saying I’m brave or nothing. Most of the time I just feel stupid.”

“Least you volunteered.”

Barrow gives Richard a long, assessing look, then smiles. “Not exactly for the right reasons,” he says.

“Oh?”

“Wanted to leave my job before I was fired, didn’t I? War gave me an out, and I took it.”

“Still,” Richard says, and Barrow rolls his eyes again. “What did you do?”

“As a job or to get fired, do you mean?” Barrow asks, but there’s a lightness to his tone. “Was in service. First footman, so that’ll tell you how bloody grand the house was.”

“Sounds it,” Richard says, smiling a little. “I was a footman too actually. Clarence House—perhaps you’ve heard of it?”

Barrow gives a disbelieving laugh. “Royal household,” he says after a moment, shaking his head. “I’ll be damned. Well, you’ve got me beat then. Nothing but the lowly Earl of Grantham, I’m afraid.”

“You don’t mean Downton?” Richard exclaims. Barrow raises his eyebrows.

“You know it?”

“Of it,” Richard corrects. “Never been, but—I grew up just outside York.”

“Small bloody world,” Barrow grins. He takes an epic drag on his cigarette; the look of it in his hands—against his lips—forces Richard to look away.

“I take it you didn’t much like it there,” Richard guesses, glancing down at his hands.

“Anyone who _likes_ service should have their head checked,” Barrow retorts, somewhat sharply, then sighs. “No offence meant. I say things I shouldn’t when I think about Downton—bad memories, and all that.”

“No, you’re right.” Richard looks up to find Barrow’s face a careful mask of surprise. “I’m only in service because my uncle was—it’s not like I chose it. Not really.”

Barrow is staring at him intently now. “Do you think you’ll go back? After, I mean.”

“Not like I have anything else going for me.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

A soldier ducks his head into the dugout before Richard can reply. He gives him only a cursory glance before nodding his head at Barrow. “McLaren’s asking for you down the line,” he says. “Thinks he’s got frostbite.”

Barrow rolls his eyes. “Can’t very well have frostbite in spring,” he says, but he’s on his feet. “Tell him I’ll be there in a minute.” The soldier nods and departs back into the night. Barrow heaves a loud sigh and stretches—Richard tracks the long line of his body before he can stop himself, but the light’s low enough that he hopes it goes unnoticed. Barrow says nothing, and Richard breathes out quietly. He notices the white patch on Barrow’s upper arm.

“You’re RAMC?” he asks, surprised.

“Try and sound more shocked, why don’t you,” Barrow grumbles. He stubs his cigarette against the wall and drops it to the dirt. “Besides, didn’t you see the bloody big cross?”

“It’s not _that_ big,” Richard defends. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have—well, anyway. It suits you.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” He steps past Richard but pauses in the dugout’s entrance, looking back at him. “Just—keep your head down, all right? I mean that literally.”

“Same to you,” Richard replies, and there’s the smallest window of a moment where Barrow looks as though he’ll say something more—a tightening of the jaw, the briefest twitch of an eyebrow. Richard finds himself holding his breath—wonders what Barrow is thinking, standing there like that, looking at him like that, like—Richard doesn’t dare put a name to it but it quickens his heart all the same.

Barrow blinks, and the moment passes. “Don’t die,” is what he says, and steps out into the rain, and the evening beyond.

Richard slumps against the wall of the trench, closing his eyes in the cool dusk. His hand is cramping from firing; there’s an ugly splash of blood that’s not his own down the leg of his trousers. It’s been near a month on the front and the reserves are due any day now. He needs the rest, needs to rid the ringing of the guns from his ears before it’s stuck there for good.

A small group of soldiers rushes past along the duckboards, carrying a stretcher between them. The last man in the line says something indistinguishable to the others and peels off from the group just ahead of Richard. He lights a cigarette as the sun dips down below the horizon; even in the darkness, there’s something about the soldier that gives Richard pause. “Barrow?” he asks carefully, and the man turns to face him.

“Well, if it isn’t the little private that could,” Barrow says, smiling, but there’s a stiffness to it. “I must admit I’m rather forgetful—”

“Ellis,” Richard cuts in before Barrow can get the question out. “It’s all right. I imagine there’s lots of lost little privates you give pep talks to.” Barrow gives him an assessing look.

“Not as many as you might think,” he replies, quirking an eyebrow. “And if that’s what you call a pep talk I’m afraid no one’s ever given you a proper one.”

Richard grins and takes the offered cigarette. “I wouldn’t presume this to be an offer, then?”

“Presume all you like, private,” Barrow replies. “I make no promises.”

“You’re already inspiring me.”

“Flanneller,” Barrow laughs.

“Maybe.”

The conversation subsides as an officer walks by, Richard and Barrow standing to attention. Somewhere in the distance, a mortar fires. “Pity the bastard who let that off,” Barrow says under his breath.

“Maybe they were testing it,” Richard allows.

“In the dark?”

“You never know.”

Barrow just shakes his head. “Figures I’d saddled myself with an optimist.”

“Now who’s the flanneller?”

Barrow snorts, a horribly undignified sort of sound, and makes to shove Richard’s shoulder. Only at that moment Richard leans away, tilting his head to catch a glimpse of the moon behind the clouds, and Barrow’s momentum carries him forward into the line of Richard’s body, who catches him.

His hands clench, inexplicably, in the fabric of Barrow’s jacket. Richard could not give two figs for the fate of the mortarman, no doubt being reamed out by his sergeant this very minute. Barrow is very still against him; Richard feels, more than hears, him take a breath.

Very slowly, Barrow’s hands reach up to hold Richard’s, and pry them gently from his jacket. “Fancy a walk?” he asks, unreadable as ever, face marbled in the moonlight, unknowable as any Bernini. Richard nods; can’t find the words. Barrow releases his hands and takes a step back; tilts his head down the line. They move off, keeping close. Richard smokes to give his hands something to do. Go far enough and they’ll be in another battalion; not far enough and the risk is perilously high.

The night unspools; Barrow halts. They’ve walked as far down as either one of them dares; haven’t passed another soldier in a good minute and it’s darker here than anywhere else, the next lantern another twenty paces down the line. He can hear Barrow breathing, steady and unhurried, releasing a plume of smoke into the air with every exhale. He’s something fae in the silvered moonlight—pale and wraithlike. Like he could swallow Richard up if he wanted.

“You got a girl back home, then?” Barrow says abruptly. Richard looks at him out of the corner of his eye.

“Can’t very well when you’re in service, can you?”

“And if you weren’t?”

Richard takes a deliberate breath. “Probably still wouldn’t.”

Barrow is altogether very close; Richard need only turn his head just so and his lips would meet the hinge of Barrow’s jaw, feel the flex of it under the skin. He waits—Barrow sighs, just an exhale, really, but it’s all Richard needs.

He turns; Barrow tilts his head just so; Richard’s lips connect with Barrow’s chin, clumsy, tracing stubble that’s grown back since his morning shave; along the hard cut of the bone, then Barrow is nudging him up with the hand not holding a cigarette, edges their lips together gently, asking for Richard’s permission—and he gives it, pushes forward into the kiss, feels the push of the other man against him like he’s trying to burrow his way into Richard’s skin, and it would be shocking if Richard wasn’t doing the same, holding onto Barrow’s shoulders for dear life, feeling the broadness of them, revelling in it, and only now is Barrow’s breath coming faster when Richard feels his legs may give out any minute—Barrow eases them into the trench wall, shielding him with his whole body, drops a hand down to Richard’s belt who moans out a “ _yes_ ,” flicks open the buckle with a practiced hand and pushes into Richard’s kiss one long moment more before sinking to his knees on the duckboards and anyone could walk past and it is holy it is violently revolutionary—takes Richard’s cock from his trousers and brushes against the tip of it, kisses along the length like they have time they really don’t, and Richard says something along the lines of “ _hurry up_ ” and “ _don’t stop_ ” and Barrow takes both as commandments, takes Richard into his mouth, cradling the root in his hand as he guides it further in and Richard has been pleasured before but not like this, not in the wet and the dark by a man who looks and talks and feels as Barrow does like he’s stepped from Richard’s most secret dream, and Richard is close now and breathing hard and places a hand in Barrow’s hair almost reverently, who moans as loud as they both dare, and when Richard comes Barrow swallows, careful not to leave a stain on the khaki, and then Richard is pulling him to his feet and kissing him even as Barrow does up his trousers and Richard’s aching to return the favour and can feel that Barrow is too and then there are voices down the line and Barrow springs off him as surely as he’d been burned.

They look at each other in the swinging half-light of the approaching lantern and then Barrow turns, tilts his body into the wall to hide the swell between his legs and lights up another cigarette with hands that are barely shaking—offers it to Richard, lights another for himself, and together they smoke in silence while the soldiers approach, nod, pass, and fade away.

“I’m sorry,” Richard says hopelessly when they’re alone again, and Barrow looks at him then.

“Are you?” he asks, into the cold, quiet dark.

“… no,” Richard admits. “Are you?” Barrow doesn’t reply, but his smile—small, warm, and real—is an answer in itself.

“We should head back,” he says, and they do—side by side down the line, towards the lantern light.

Richard goes home for a week when his battalion’s relieved. The roses are blooming, he notes, in the rich pinks he remembers as a boy. His mother tries to fatten him up with a roast every second day he’s there but his stomach’s grown too used to army rations. She gives him a worried look when he pushes his plate away, unfinished, but is too scared—or sad—to say anything.

When he gets back to the front the Somme is well underway. Captain Wright is dead—just last week he’d shaken Richard’s hand, said how he’d envied him, that he hadn’t seen his family since the winter. Carmichael, Reid, and Jenkins are gone too, and MacLeod will never walk again. Richard has always made friends easily, but it feels less like a gift every day they're ordered over the top. 

He's clipped with a bit of shrapnel on the calf towards the end of July. The medic who tends to him has a long, serious face and careful hands. “You wouldn’t know if Corporal Barrow’s about?” Richard asks when the cut’s been stitched and bandaged.

“Don’t know a Corporal Barrow,” the medic replies, his voice as serious as his face and dourer besides. “But I’ve only been here a week—ask Foyle, he’s just down the line.”

Richard thanks him and hobbles his way over. The only medic in the vicinity is a short man with curling blonde hair escaping from beneath his helmet; he’s leaning over a sergeant who looks to have gas burns. Richard waits until the sergeant is loaded onto a stretcher, face an ugly grimace of pain, before stepping forward. “Corporal Foyle? I was told to find you.”

Foyle looks up. “What’s the problem?”

“No, nothing like that,” Richard says hastily. “I’ve been treated. Only I was told you might know where to find Corporal Barrow?”

“Barrow?” Foyle repeats. “Sour chap, dark hair?”

“Well—”

“He was shot, couple nights ago.”

“What?” Richard’s stomach bottoms out. He can’t keep looking at Foyle; drops his gaze to the ground, feels it swim for a sickening moment before he closes his eyes.

“They took him to the dressing station, last I’d heard. If it’s bad enough they’ll send him home.”

Richard opens his eyes. The ground is solid beneath his feet. “He’s alive, then,” he manages to say. Foyle gives a shrug and walks off but Richard—Richard can’t move for a moment. Takes a breath, clenches and unclenches his hands, feels the throb of the wound in his leg reminding him that he’s alive, he’s alive—what Barrow would think of him now. The thought lifts the weight from Richard’s bones and he returns to his dugout lighter, somehow, like Barrow had looked at all the bits that made him up and said _yes, I like this part_ , and plucked it from Richard to keep, to carry with him over the sea. 

_Corporal Barrow,_

_I hope this letter finds you well—that it finds you at all, really, given we’d never discussed where you were headed after the war. I’m glad you told me of Downton at least—hopefully they’ll know where you’ve landed and forward it on._

_I must say it shocked me to hear you were wounded, dreadfully so, until Corporal Foyle clarified his own misleading remark to say you were wounded and sent home, not wounded and killed. I think a lot about our conversation the last time we met. In fact I would very much like to continue it one day. I have since thought of a good many topics to discuss, if you would let me take the lead._

_I hope it is not presumptuous of me to say that I am_

_Your friend,_

_Private Richard Ellis_

_P.S. I hope there aren’t too many “Barrows” in Yorkshire. Can you believe I never learned your first name? I find it hard to believe you were a footman at all—which is a good thing to my mind._

_P.P.S. The roses at my parents’ house in York are blooming as I write this. Perhaps, when you read it, they still are._


	2. Autumn 1916 – Spring 1917

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _P.S. The Lady Sybil Crawley, daughter of the Earl of Grantham, says hello. She works with me at the hospital and insists upon being called “Nurse Crawley” now, but I doubt you of all people would begrudge me the chance to show off—have I heard of Clarence House indeed!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was so absolutely blown away by the response to the first chapter. i've never felt so welcomed by a fandom than i have this one; thank you so much, everyone who commented, left kudos, and subscribed. you're all absolute legends.
> 
> standard warnings again for downton s2 as well as some s6 thomas vibes, including shellshock, suicide, suicidal ideation, and depression. also a horrifically excessive use of the em dash to which i can only say: sorry.

It’s an unseasonably warm September day and Thomas is smoking on the stoop of the village hospital. The trees lining the yard are already bruising yellow; in the sun they’d seem almost gold if Thomas didn’t know what real gold looks like. He’s loath to leave his patch of warmth for the rest of his shift, but he’s smoked away most of his half hour already and he’s even more reluctant to incur Clarkson’s reprimand. It’s hard to reconcile the relative peace and quiet he enjoys here with—with what he left behind— _head down, listen for the whine of the shell_ —no, don’t—the crack of shrapnel through bone—he wonders if it’s still raining— _mum, please, I’m_ —digs his nails into the palm of his hand to stop the thought before it can spiral. England, autumn, sunshine. The crack of a motorcar backfiring. The smell of fresh scones—

“Thomas,” Nurse Crawley interrupts, gentle-like. Thomas opens his eyes—when had he closed them?—to find her smiling beside him on the stoop, covered basket in one hand and letter in the other. “This came for you yesterday,” she says, gentle still, “—I told Mrs Hughes I’d deliver it.”

He takes the letter—hand steady, that’s something at least—and offered scone. Nurse Crawley’s got a pot of jam with her, Mrs Patmore’s raspberry it looks like, but Thomas declines and eats his plain. He doesn’t recognise the handwriting on the envelope. It’s addressed:

_Corporal Barrow  
Downton Abbey  
Downton, Yorkshire_

He turns it over.

_Private R. Ellis  
13th Infantry Brigade  
32nd Division, VIII Corps  
British Reserve Army_

“Who’s it from?” Nurse Crawley asks, politely wiping scone crumbs from her chin. Thomas turns the letter back over to hide the return address.

“No one,” he answers automatically. “Just—a friend.”

“Well, tell him hello from me when you write back,” she says, draping the checked cloth back over the remaining scones. “I’m putting the rest of these in my room but I’ll save you some for tomorrow, all right?”

“Mrs Patmore meant them for you, not me,” Thomas says, sliding the letter into his pocket and attempting to smile in the glare of the sun. He just barely catches Nurse Crawley rolling her eyes—something she’d never do up at the house, and makes him feel strangely gladdened to be trusted to see it.

“And just how, exactly, will she know the difference?”

Thomas laughs, genuine, as Nurse Crawley walks away. He watches her disappear back inside, waits a few more moments to be sure she’s gone, then reaches for the letter. It’s clearly been opened already by the censors, but it wouldn’t have been sent on if it contained anything incriminating. He slides his thumb under the flap and pulls out the quarter-folded paper inside. The penmanship is neat, though overly slanted—it reads as eager, unaffected. He presses his thumb briefly against the words _your friend_ , then folds the letter back up into the envelope. His heart’s slowed but his face is warm—just the sun, he imagines himself saying were anyone to ask, but no one does. He finishes his scone and follows Nurse Crawley inside, letter not quite burning a hole in his pocket—but close to it, all the same.

_7 September 1916_

_Ellis,_

_I can’t say how glad I was to receive your letter. I am still living at Downton, in fact, though in the village rather than the house, at the small hospital here, so your letter didn’t go too far astray. My wound was bad enough to send me home for good but I can still work towards the war effort, for which I am grateful. It is better here than both service and the front, though I doubt it will last longer than the war itself. When I figure out what I’m to do afterwards I will let you know promptly to avoid such roundabout correspondence!_

_I too think about our conversation. Most days, in fact. It is strange to have a fond memory from the trenches but there you are. Perhaps, when all this is over—though I dare not jinx it—we could pick up where we left off? Only if you do not find me_ _too presumptuous, Private Ellis. I am eager to hear your contributions._

_Your friend,_

_Barrow_

_P.S. The Lady Sybil Crawley, daughter of the Earl of Grantham, says hello. She works with me at the hospital and insists upon being called “Nurse Crawley” now, but I doubt you of all people would begrudge me the chance to show off—have I heard of Clarence House indeed!_

_P.P.S. My name is Thomas._

He sends the letter the next day; ducks into the post office before his afternoon shift hoping not to run into anyone he knows. It’s not like it needs to be a secret, though everyone downstairs—Miss O’Brien included—would no doubt be shocked to learn Thomas had made a friend on the front. The thought makes something bitter curl up inside him that he’d thought gone since he left service—and that makes him angrier still, that they still have such a hold over him, that Thomas could move to Manchester, to Paris, to Tangiers, and still not be able to leave behind the memories he made here—the ugliness they bring out of him.

Thomas has never been a kind person and he’s not about to start now—but his mother had always loved his sharp corners. Not since she died has anyone tried to navigate them, except maybe Miss O’Brien, who’d handed him a whetstone and set him to work. Even Phillip had avoided them, in steel-plated armour to dull Thomas’ edges, to hide his own spikes until it was too late.

But then Ellis—Thomas barely knows the man, that much is true, and he’s done more with men who’ve meant a lot less—but there was something about him from the start, young and scared as he was, and if Thomas wasn’t a coward—now a provable fact—he’d have seen it sooner.

But then Ellis—Ellis is brave, and Thomas envies him for it.

September ends and no reply comes. October bleeds into November and Thomas—Thomas throws himself into work, forces himself to stop thinking about it, tries to tear up that first letter but can’t do it, not yet, buries it in his underthings instead and closes the drawer. 

Nurse Crawley notices his mood but says nothing after her first attempt when Thomas shuts her down like he’d never dreamed of doing back at the house. She brings him fruit scones and Chelsea buns from Mrs Patmore as an apology and they eat them together on the hospital stoop. Thomas buys her a handkerchief with a red checked trim like her basket covering for Christmas—it’s as much a _thank you_ as he can manage, and she smiles like she understands. She gives him a new glove, soft grey kid leather that costs more than he earns in a year, but Thomas hears the _you’re welcome_ behind it and doesn’t protest. “Now that’s over with,” she says in a tone that brooks no argument, “call me Sybil, Thomas, please, it’s getting rather ridiculous,” and Thomas doesn’t protest that either.

A slew of patients arrive in the new year and Thomas near forgets the letter. There’s a captain with both legs missing at the knee who dotes on Sybil like she were the Madonna herself, a major with a bullet through the lung that makes his every breath rattle, and a young lieutenant with gas blindness and a whip-smart tongue who takes to Thomas for reasons he can’t fathom. “Nurse Crawley tells me you won’t talk with the rest of the staff,” Thomas says one day, two weeks into Lieutenant Courtenay’s stay. “Only me. You know, most of them aren’t half bad. You can eke out a conversation if you really have a go of it and then it’s only slightly painful.”

Courtenay never smiles but his mouth quirks up at Thomas’ comment. “Painful is right,” he replies, “though I’d argue the _slightly_.” He smooths the blanket at his waist. “They treat me like an invalid,” he says at last. “You don’t. You’re a little mean, actually; it’s refreshing.”

“I don’t try to be,” Thomas says, at which Courtenay tilts his head.

“That’s why it’s refreshing.”

Thomas leaves their conversation with a strange feeling in his chest that he knows exactly what to name—yet even as he thinks it, his mind conjures Ellis as he’d last seen him— _I’m sorry—are you?—no_. _Are you?_ Ellis hadn’t minded his sharp tongue, either. And he wasn’t a great lord or gentleman Thomas needed to tiptoe around—they were the same, the two of them, or near enough. But it’s all moot anyway—Ellis has forgotten him, that or he’s dead, and Thomas has long since learned his lesson on dallying with nobility. They come on kind enough, to be sure, but have far too little to lose to care. And Thomas—Thomas has rather too much, though he’d never admit it aloud.

The letter arrives on a Monday.

_21 January 1917_

_Barrow,_

_You must forgive me this belated reply. I thought it was my letter than had gotten lost on its way to you—turns out it was yours that took the roundabout journey! Not a month after I wrote you I took a bit of shrapnel in the shoulder—it seemed a minor wound at first, but became rather terribly infected. By the time your letter reached the front I was in a field hospital sweating out my fever—it found its way to another R. Ellis, a lieutenant summarily offended by being mistaken for a private of the same name. He returned the letter (unopened), prompting them to send it on to the hospital where I had been staying—yet by then I was on my way back to England! It chased me from convalescent home to my parents' house in York and finally found me at Clarence yesterday, where I returned to work last week. The wound is mostly healed up now but prevents me from carrying a rifle properly, for which I dare not say I am grateful—yet I am certainly not saddened by. On account of it, and the death of his grace’s last man in Flanders, I have been made valet to the duke_ _, who has just returned from governing Canada. I had to fight his son’s valet for the position, but having been wounded in service of king and country they couldn’t very well refuse me. Mr Corbett’s glare could have made a grown man weep, he was that incensed over the snub. I must admit I rather miss the excitement of dinner, for his grace is not the most eloquent of conversationalists, but being bored is better than spilling hollandaise all over his dinner jacket! The illustrious life of the royal household is perhaps not quite as you imagined, Barrow, but it must be enough for me for now. As I said, there is little else I know how to do. At least you can apply a tourniquet!_

_I apologise for writing such a fearfully long explanation but I wanted you to understand I did not leave you in the lurch on purpose. In fact as you read this you are probably regretting our correspondence now I have revealed what a dreadfully long-winded writer I am. Yet another shortcoming I ask your forgiveness for. You must keep track of them, Barrow, for I intend to make it up to you one day. Perhaps when next we meet?_

_Your hopelessly tardy friend,_

_Ellis_

_P.S. Tommy?_

_12 February 1917_

_Ellis,_

_I am addressing your postscript here to be as clear as possible: my name is THOMAS and nicknames to the contrary are simply insufferable. But then, I imagine you knew that already._

_Of course I forgive you the unavoidable delay in your reply—and I am sorry to hear you were wounded, though is it terrible of me to say I’m glad you’re safe now? If only you had remained a footman—I would have paid to see such an incident at dinner! If things of such excitement happened at Downton while I was there I may never have left in the first place (though if you know Downton, you know plenty things did indeed happen there, but of course I am no gossip)._

_You mustn’t be down on yourself for not knowing a life outside service. I find it hard to imagine as well. I became a hall boy in a middling household when I was fourteen, and haven’t done anything else since. I’m thinking of going into business, perhaps, when all this is over, though who knows where one is to begin with that? And applying a tourniquet really isn’t all that difficult, Ellis, honestly. One just has to use pressure in the right places. Perhaps I could show you when next we meet—I’m certain you’re a quick study. How else does an upstart like you make valet?_

_Your prompt friend,_

_Barrow_

_P.S. I know even without asking you’re a Dick. Dickie, perhaps? I find I am curious to know your answer._

_24 February 1917_

_Barrow,_

_I know you’re teasing but my friends do in fact call me Dick. Is it dreadful of me to ask you to use it? I only feel that it’s strange for men who’ve shared the experience of the battlefield and other things to still call each other by our surnames—though I understand if you would want to keep it that way._

_You say you’re no gossip—and of course I don’t doubt you—but I don’t know what goes on at Downton so would be happy to hear it from you. I’ve never had much time for the dramas of the great households, which always seem rather silly to me. His grace’s wife’s last scandal, for example, involved the tearing of her peach taffeta evening gown by an unbeknownst assailant, a crime only revealed when her grace wished to wear it to Christmas dinner. The reverberations were felt throughout the house, though perhaps most keenly by Miss Holland, who managed to save the day (and her job) with a simple stitch her grace could have learned in an hour should she be so inclined. From your tone I take it things at Downton were rather more exciting—should you wish to enlighten me, I am_

_Your avid listener,_

_Dick_

_P.S. I am so very interested in all you have to teach me, Barrow, I will forgive the upstart comment. You may even find my youth an invigorating asset to our lessons._

They don’t discuss the war beyond those first letters. Thomas writes Ellis—Richard—Dick—about Downton, glossing over the less flattering anecdotes and receiving thinly veiled commentary on the royal household in kind. Dick writes of his parents and younger sister, Minnie, and Thomas tamps down on the jealousy that threatens to tear him apart as he writes back _I am glad you are loved and cared for_ before swiftly changing the subject. The pendulum swings from winter into spring and just like that it’s been a year since they met. Thomas mentions as much, not daring to place too much importance on the date; but Dick's reply includes the word _anniversary_ and it should be wrong for Thomas to feel so happy when there’s a war going on but he does and will not apologise, not for this.

Sybil notices his mood, because of course she does, and gives his elbow a gentle squeeze that doesn’t make him flinch like it used to. Lieutenant Courtenay picks up on it as well, but doesn’t seem gladdened by it—he withdraws, if anything, and it worries Thomas, but there’s nothing he can do besides reading him his letters like always. He and Sybil take Courtenay walking in the yard when they can, careful to avoid the mud of the fresh spring rain, but something has shifted in him that they both can see. Sybil brings eclairs for the three of them to share one morning that Thomas knows Mrs Patmore baked for her birthday, but doesn’t refuse the pastry when offered. He whispers to Courtenay when she is preoccupied with fixing her cap—the two of them together say, “happy birthday!” too loudly when she turns back around and Thomas doesn’t have to pretend things are perfect because in that moment they feel it.

And then Courtenay—

Then he—

Thomas doesn’t write for a month.

_20 May 1917_

_Dick,_

_There’s no excuse for not replying in so long, but I’m giving you one anyway:_

_One of our patients killed himself last month. His name was Edward Courtenay and he was Sybil’s and my friend, and now he’s dead._

_~~Sometimes I think~~ _ _I ruin things—no—I know I do. It’s like I can’t let something good last because I know it will be ruined eventually and I do it first, so it hurts less in the end. Does that make sense? ~~I don’t understand why I’m alive and he’s~~_

_He was so much better than me. Was—funny how one word can change everything._

_I don’t know. I worry this is all a dream sometimes. that you died from that infection or I died or I don’t know everything’s all blurred and strange and I feel like I’m cracking open and there’s nothing inside of me. I don’t exist. I shouldn’t, not when he_

_~~I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I suppose there’s no one else.~~ _

_Burn this,_

_T_

He’s on a boat. The waves gently rock the vessel back and forth; it’s overcast, but not raining yet, and the breeze is cool rather than cold. It caresses his hair.

“Thomas.”

He opens his eyes. Sybil is shaking him gently by the shoulder. “Thomas,” she says. “There’s a telephone call for you.”

He blinks at her. He’s always been slow to wake and lately it’s worse than ever—like there’s a fog, somehow, around him and in him. He lifts a hand to part the mist. “What?”

She smiles at him, draws back from her touch. “A telephone call. Dress quickly and come down.” She leaves and Thomas does as she says. Shirt, breeches, boots. Buttons. Enough pomade to pass inspection. Sybil is waiting for him at the foot of the stairs; tilts her head for him to follow and leads them to Clarkson’s office, where the major is bent over papers on his desk. He looks up at their entry and something flickers in his gaze so fast Thomas can’t be sure it was there.

“Barrow,” he says, straightening his paperwork and walking around the desk. “I don’t allow personal calls here as a rule. But,” and he glances at Sybil as he says this, “I know… recent events… have been difficult. I’m making an exception this once. Just finish up in time for your shift.”

He and Sybil leave the room, closing the door behind them. Thomas looks at the phone on the desk. Walks over. Picks it up.

“Hello?”

“ _Thomas._ ”

It’s Dick—Thomas hasn’t heard his voice in a year but he knows it’s him. He grabs at his throat for a moment, feels like he might be sick; swallows, hard.

“Are you mad?” he says after too long a pause. “You can’t just call me here.”

Dick breathes out on the other end of the line. “Well, I am,” he replies. A pause. Then: “I got your letter.”

Thomas closes his eyes. He leans against the edge of the desk. “I don’t know why I wrote that,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry you had to read it.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Dick says sharply, then sighs. “I mean it, Thomas. Not about this. Don’t be sorry.”

“I’m—” — _sorry_ , Thomas is about to say. He bites it back. “I shouldn’t have written it. Worried you.”

“I _want_ to be worried,” Dick replies. “I wish you didn’t feel like you had to keep it from me.”

“I just.” Thomas looks down at his gloved hand. He flexes it, curls it in. “I want you to be happy. I want what we are to be—happy.”

Dick takes his time in replying; Thomas watches the clock on the wall. Finally: “Sometimes, when I wake up, I think I’m back there. Just for a moment, like when a dream takes its time to leave you. I can’t breathe, when it happens, until everything comes back. Or I’ll walk into the boot room and the light’s not turned on and it feels like the dark is just pressing in on me, and I’m scared to see what’s in the corners, what I can’t see. Sometimes I don’t turn on the light. And I dream about it, every night. My shoulder aches so badly in the cold I think my arm’s going to fall right off. I can’t stand thunderstorms and the rain makes me nervous and I’m _happy_ , Thomas—I think all these things and I’m still happy, and I can worry about you and be happy.”

“I _can’t_.” Thomas is clutching the receiver so tight he can feel it pressing indents into his skin. “I’m not—I can’t. I can’t think those things and be happy, Dick, I can’t.” His cheeks are wet. “I can’t.”

Another silence, shorter this time. “That’s okay,” Dick says gently. “I can do it for you. But you have to tell me things. Or anyone. Sybil.”

Thomas wipes his nose with his sleeve. “They’d all kill you for calling her that.”

“Thomas.”

“Yes, all right.” Quieter: “I’ll try.”

“All right.”

“All right.”

A knock on the door; Sybil peeks her head inside. “Shift’s in five,” she whispers apologetically. Thomas nods.

“I need to go,” he says to Dick.

“I probably should too,” he answers. Thomas frowns.

“Where are you calling from, anyway?”

“Somewhere I shouldn’t,” Dick replies. Thomas can hear the smile in his voice.

“I’m starting to think you’re a bad influence, Mr Ellis,” he says, standing.

“Am I?”

Thomas smiles, presses his fingertips into the wood of the desk. “No,” he says, releasing the pressure, imagining Dick on the other end of the line, holding the telephone, laughing. It’s raining in Downton today; he hopes the sun has found London. He thinks Dick should be under the sun, always. “You’re really not.”

The rain stops that afternoon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thomas' depression is something we only really see in s5 and 6, but i wanted to explore it here because feelings like that don't just spring out of nowhere. i hope i kept true to s2 thomas while also bringing out those nuances? also richard is dick in this because i just think it's neat 
> 
> some more notes on historical accuracy:
> 
> \- re: richard's postal address, i doubt this is entirely accurate as i gave up on research half an hour into my wikipedia deep dive, but the reserve army started out as the reserve corps in march 1916, was renamed in june, then again on 30 october as the fifth army. they were a significant part of the somme offensive; the viii corps were originally a part of the fourth army but detached to the reserve on 3 july where they participated in the battles of pozieres and thiepval ridge, among others. the 32nd division was part of the reserve that played a significant role at thiepval; whether a 13th infantry brigade existed within that division was, however, where my research spiral halted. and of course the reserve army began as a volunteer force; however i am simply continuing my ahistorical trainwreck from chapter one and making richard a conscript because what’s a glaring anachronism among friends?  
> \- the "duke" richard mentions is queen victoria’s third son, prince arthur, who was indeed governor general in canada until 1916. i couldn’t quite find out if he returned to england straight afterwards but let’s pretend he did. i’m not writing a monograph here


	3. Summer 1917 – Winter 1918

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Steady on_ , he imagines Thomas saying, smiling, maybe. _You steady me_ , Richard would say back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i said this ONCE and i'll say it AGAIN! the feedback on this fic has been truly astonishing; the comments, in particular, warm my heart so much you can't even imagine. thank you everyone who has been been leaving them, and everyone else reading, subscribing, bookmarking, and leaving kudos – you're all bloody legends!
> 
> this chapter says fuck you to slow burn and [john mulaney as mick jagger voice] YEAH! to giving the gays what they want, so. if you're into that slow burn life all props to you but this fic is probably not what you're looking for. though considering thomas gave richard a blow job the second time they met i would be shocked if anyone is surprised by this.
> 
> less warnings than the last chapters! but still some war talk and discussions of death/period-typical homophobia (though very mild) because this is downton abbey fic and there has to be something. also ocs! but they are Good and Nice mostly.

It’s the tail-end of August and Richard’s shoulder aches, which is strange since it’s summer. The rain’s supposed to be the thing that does it—but, Richard reasons, he did get shot on the cusp of autumn. Perhaps it’s memory, more than anything else, that pains him.

Thomas’ letters help.

 _Dick,_ he writes, _I had a dream last night—nothing of the kind you’re imagining; in fact, it was rather lovely. You were in it. I suppose you can guess at its contents?_

 _Dick_ , he writes, _they’ve opened the abbey as a convalescent home at Sybil’s rather astonishing insistence. I never thought I’d come to admire one of their lot let alone call her my friend, but war makes for strange bedfellows. As you’d well know. It makes little difference to the lives already lost, but I suppose your optimism has rubbed off on me, for I believe it will do a great deal of good in the future. I feel happy/sad about it—still working on admitting that, though with you it feels easier every day._

 _Dick_ , he writes, _I thought of your mother’s roses today. Describe them to me, again? You’ve a way with words that rather floors me—though I do wish I could hear them aloud. DO NOT take this as an invitation to hasten to the nearest telephone—I can hold out, I promise, and the sure knowledge of you safe and OUT OF TROUBLE is balm enough for now. (I mean it, Dick. Be careful.)_

 _Dick_ , he writes, _I long for your companionship. The days grow weary here and Downton is as I remember it. I know you will understand._

He writes—

Y _ours,_

_T_

—the loop of the signature dear enough to Richard he could draw it in his sleep.

He keeps the letters under his pillow until they stack too high to be comfortable. He moves them under the bed then thinks better of it and stuffs them in a drawer with his civvies, then thinks better of _that_ and hides them in a shoe beneath a blanket behind his pressed suit and winter coat in the wardrobe and shuts the door.

The finality yawns at him.

Richard opens the door, shifts the coat, lifts the blanket, reaches inside the shoe and pulls out the first letter Thomas sent him, almost a year ago now. It goes under his pillow; the wardrobe door closes on the rest. Richard has always been careful, even as a boy, and if he hadn’t the royal household would’ve straightened him out soon enough. But there’s something about Thomas that hastens his pulse, his hands—among other things. It would scare him if he hadn’t seen war—instead it just thrills him.

 _Steady on_ , he imagines Thomas saying, smiling, maybe. _You steady me_ , Richard would say back. If they were somewhere they could kiss, they would; Richard along Thomas’ jawline, Thomas the corner tuck of his lips. The thought carries Richard through dinner. His hands don’t shake the silverware.

_3 September 1917_

_Thomas,_

_Regarding Downton, I understand completely. C.H. is comfortable enough but it isn’t home. Of the staff, only two are the same since before the war—Mr Jameson, the butler, and the cook, Mrs Wolfe, neither one of them inclined to much good cheer, though Mrs Wolfe is more easily swayed by a smile and compliment on her petit fours, when she isn’t threatening me with a wooden spoon for stealing one like I’m still a footman. The kindest word I can use to describe Jameson is “traditional”. You can perhaps infer the alternatives._

_The rest of the staff are strangers to me. Friends aren’t encouraged in the royal household, though Miss Holland (of peach taffeta gown fame) is warm enough (slightly less so since the gown incident). I suspect the newest footman has something in common with the both of us, but he is altogether too ginger and too nervous to last long here. I addressed him directly the other night and he put his elbow in the gravy dish. (No, it’s nothing like you’re thinking—he really is just that twitchy.) There is no one I can talk to in any meaningful way and it feels rather lonely at times, even more so than it did before the war—though I find I am also glad of it, for it means I can save up all my words for you, you who I know will listen to them as they are meant to be listened to._

_Forgive me for waxing poetic; you bring it out in me. I am_

_Your wordsmith,_

_Dick_

_18 September 1917_

_Thomas,_

_You flatter me; I am no poet. Though if there were ever someone I would write poetry about… it would of course be Eric, the ginger footman, who is, I failed to mention, a head and a half shorter than me. Pause for laughter._

_My heart gladdens to hear you are settling into your new role at Downton. It seems a difficult position to be in, but you are handling it admirably. I do not blame you in the slightest for seizing the reins perhaps a little tightly—though I do hope you can ease up soon, if only for your own peace of mind. I’m glad you have Miss O’Brien in your corner at least. She sounds like she cares for you very much, in her own way. Don’t act so surprised by the sentiment! You’re worth caring for._

_Nothing new here, I’m afraid. Miss Holland devours the war pages of the paper every morning and seems to think I like her telling me the goings on. I do not. You will tell me I am too polite for my own good, but she has been a lady’s maid longer than I’ve been a valet, and that’s always what counts, isn’t it? Luckily, her voice is easy enough to tune out. I’ve found if I make the right sounds in the right places she takes it to mean she has my attention, when unbeknownst to her it is wandering to other, better things. I’m sure you can imagine what. Perhaps you are even imagining ‘what’ now. I know I am, and my evening’s all the better for it._

_Yours in distractedness,_

_Dick_

_24 October 1917_

_Thomas,_

_The autumn chill has well and truly set in on London, though I know the wind in Yorkshire is no doubt twice as bitter. I find myself longing for a bed that isn’t half my size, though I’ve never slept in anything else—strange, this feeling, like I’m imagining a future the other side of this war I can barely see, if only I can catch it to take hold._

_I suppose I am melancholy. Yesterday I heard my cousin got it at Ypres. We lived on the same street but were never really close, though it’s sad all the same, to know he will never come home to York and the cherry tree_ _his mother, my aunt, keeps in their yard. When we were children Rob used to push me into the stream that ran along the backs of both our houses and when he did it once in winter I’d wished he was dead. I was nine. Funny, that it took so long coming true. I know you, of all people, will not judge me too harshly for thinking it, though I dearly wish I could see your face as you tell me so._

_I’m sorry this letter is so dreary, though the thought of you on the other end does lift my spirits. Please don’t be too sad for me. Always_

_Yours,_

_Dick_

_6 November 1917_

_Thomas,_

_Your words cheered me more than I can say, which is a rare and strange thing. I have come to associate you with rare and strange feelings of late. They do rare and strange things to my heart._

_Thank you for telling me of P. We are all capable of bad things—thoughts, words, deeds. It does not make you a bad person, nor do any of the other things you wrote me. I know what you were trying to do, and it worked, like you knew it would. I was nine; it was a passing thought only. I too have done worse things, none of which define me. We are more than they make of us, and more than we make of ourselves, at times._

_How I wish I could look at you as I write this._

_The last letter my mother sent me contained a pressed dried flower from her garden. I am forwarding it on to you, for I have seen enough of her roses to last a lifetime, and I recall fondly your interest in them. Perhaps gardening as a future career path?_ _I’ve always thought it peaceful._

_Your dearly grateful friend,_

_Dick_

_10 December 1917_

_T,_

_I do not have long. Xmas preparations are well underway at C.H. which means little sleep for me and less time I have to give to you, though I spare as much as I am able._

_Every year they say the war will be over by Xmas though again I believe it too good to be true. I wish for the quiet of peacetime, the living to stay living, the dreams to stop—too much to hope for, I know. Just one more wish, then: to see you again. I miss you, may I say, and think very often of how you would look in the snow, pale and pink-cheeked and brilliant._

_Yours in haste,_

_R_

A week before Christmas, Richard gets a parcel in the mail. Jameson hands it to him with the deepest kind of disapproval he normally reserves for politics and laughter in the servants’ hall. Richard takes it with a smile he puts effort in not to make smug, and stashes it in the wardrobe with the rest of Thomas’ letters before the morning bell.

He walks on air the rest of the day; Miss Holland, in the boot room, comments on his mood. “I like Christmas, is all,” Richard replies, truthfully enough, and makes his exit before she can bore him to death.

That night, in his room, Richard shuts the door and jams a chair beneath the knob. He removes his jacket, tie, and shoes, laying the former at the foot of the bed and the latter by the door, then takes the parcel from the wardrobe and sits on the middle of his mattress where the springs have the most give.

He opens the parcel. There’s another layer of wrapping inside and a card sitting on top, upper right corner bent out of shape from the journey. Richard smooths it out with his thumbnail. The illustration on the front is a village in the snow wreathed by holly; the verse below, in curling script, reads:

_The day of days in all the year  
Would perfect be if you were here_

Richard laughs aloud and opens the card.

 _Dick_ , it reads in Thomas’ familiar hand.

_What do you think of my poetry? Here is some more:_

_It were as possible for_  
_me to say I loved nothing so well as you, but believe me not,_  
_and yet I lie not, I confess nothing, nor I deny nothing._

_Merry Christmas, and all that._

_T_

Richard reads the words again; presses his thumb against _I loved nothing so well as you_. He sets the card aside after a moment and unwraps the accompanying gift. A scarf falls out—soft and thick and _blue_ , like oceans. Richard runs his hand through the fabric, feels it catch on something; pulls out a note, folded in half and half again. He unfolds it.

_I too think of you in the snow. This will complete the picture. x_

Richard feels like crying, or laughing, or both—he settles for wrapping the scarf round his neck, flushed in its warmth—imagines Thomas standing in front of him, pressed between his legs, hands toying with the ends to pull Richard closer, up and into a kiss. “I loved nothing so well as you,” he’d whisper against Richard’s lips—“I love you and will not eat it,” Richard would reply, and then there’d be no more talking, just this, them, and the breathless sharing of air between sheets until sunrise.

**0735 HATCHARDS** **PICCADILLY**

**TO BARROW DOWNTON ABBEY YO51**

RCVD GIFT STOP WILL WEAR OFTEN STOP RE POETRY I PROTEST STOP URS BENEDICK

Christmas shuffles past, and Thomas sends his thanks for Richard’s gift, a silver waistcoat fob embossed with the sun. _Not much call for wearing it now_ , he writes— _but I imagine that future we talked about, and dearly hope I can find one._

They are careful, almost bland, in their correspondence since the telegram. Richard’s almost certain his mail is private, but it’s an almost his pen catches on. If Thomas’ letters are any indication, he seems to agree. He does not mention _love_ again. 

Late January, a letter arrives from Richard’s mother. He opens it at breakfast.

_Dickie,_

_Jack has proposed to Minnie and they want to marry before he leaves for the front. Can you ask for Feb 16th – 18th off? Wedding is set for the Saturday._

_Hope you are keeping well and out of trouble._

_Love,_

_Mum_

Before the gong that evening, Richard knocks on Jameson’s office door. “I have a favour to ask,” he begins delicately, hovering in the doorway until the butler waves him in. “The thing is, Mr Jameson,” Richard continues, gingerly taking his seat, “my sister’s getting married the third weekend of February—her fiancé’s just turned eighteen and he’s enlisting, you see, so this is really the only chance they have to marry—”

“And you want the time off,” Jameson interrupts. His eyebrows are at his hairline; Richard is almost positive that one more shocking statement will send them flying right off.

“… well, yes,” he replies. “I know the state dinner’s on the Sunday but I could be back in time for that, easy. It’s only York.” The eyebrows stay where they are. Richard clears his throat. “She’s my only sister, Mr Jameson. I’d like to be there for her. And, frankly, to see the lad off before he goes to war. Tell him what to expect, and the like.” It does the trick; Jameson’s eyebrows begin their slow descent back down his brow. 

“I’ll ask his grace,” the butler allows, and Richard knows a dismissal when he hears it; nods, dashes from the room and upstairs in time to dress the duke for tea.

He hasn’t heard anything by the time he heads to bed, but writes a letter to Thomas anyway.

_T,_

_Will be in York Feb 16 – 18 for Minnie’s wedding. Arriving Fri afternoon and leaving early Sun morning, cannot be spared Sat for obv reasons—if you can get Fri night off and find your way into the city, perhaps we could meet for a drink?_

_Yours in hope,_

_R_

Jameson catches him before luncheon the next day. “You can go,” he says gruffly. “Just be back in time to dress his grace Sunday night.”

Richard beams as Jameson stalks away. He posts Thomas’ letter that afternoon.

_3 February 1918_

_Dick,_

_I never thought there was much fun to be had in York; I await you changing my mind. My train arrives 5:03._

_Yours,_

_T_

The house is the same as when Richard left it early last year. The flowerbeds are frozen over and the eaves thick with frost, but a warm and merry light burns inside that dispels most of the nerves fluttering about his stomach.

The front door opens before he can reach it; Minnie pours out in slippers and thick dressing gown frayed at the ends, her cheeks red and smile brimming. “Dickie!” she near-shouts, throwing her arms around his neck and pulling him into a hug. She’s so tall he barely has to bend to meet the embrace, and her grip is stronger than he remembers.

“What on earth have you done with my baby sister?” Richard laughs when they break apart. He peers over her shoulders exaggeratedly. “Someone said she was getting married, but I’ll believe that when I see it.”

“You’re _hilarious_ ,” Minnie says, rolling her eyes. “Come in, silly, you’re letting in the cold.”

“You left the door open,” Richard snipes back, but follows her inside. She folds her arms and watches him remove his coat. He raises his eyebrows.

“What?” she laughs. “It’s _your_ job, not mine.” Back to the rest of the house, she pokes her tongue out at him. Richard casts a quick glance down the hallway and pokes his right back.

“ _Dickie_.”

Minnie hunches forward in silent laughter as their mother rounds the doorframe from the kitchen.

“Really,” she continues, “you’re twenty-four, not twelve.” She opens her arms, and Richard buries his _sorry, Mum_ into her hair as she hugs him. They let go, and her face softens as she tucks his hair behind his ear. “Minnie, take your brother’s things upstairs.”

She makes a face their mum can’t see and aims a kick at Richard’s shin as she walks past with his bag; he sidesteps her in time and she just manages to avoid falling into the wall. He smiles innocently when she turns to look at him on the stairs; she huffs, rolls her eyes, then continues to the landing above.

Richard’s mum leads him into the kitchen. “You wouldn’t mind driving us to the service tomorrow, would you dear?” she asks, pushing him into a chair and setting the kettle on the stove. “Your father’s eyesight’s not what it used to be and I find all those pedals rather confusing.”

“Of course,” Richard says. The motorcar had been his uncle’s, but when he’d died the family wanted nothing to do with it. It sat mostly unused on the road, until his father taught himself how to drive before the war. And then it sat mostly unused on the road, because York is hardly big enough to need it.

A plate of biscuits lands on the table in front of Richard along with the sugar and a jug of milk. “Mum, really, I don’t need all this,” Richard protests. “I’m going for dinner later, I wrote you.”

“Yes, I know.” The kettle boils and his mum pours it into the blue porcelain pot. “I don’t understand why you couldn’t just invite him round here, Dickie. We barely see you as is.”

“I know, Mum.” Richard takes the offered cup and adds two sugars. “But I haven’t seen him since the war and besides, he works up at Downton Abbey, I don’t want to take him from one busy household to another.”

“At Downton?” His mum sits at the chair beside his. “I’d heard they turned it into a convalescent home, you know, after some poor soldier killed himself in the hospital.”

“I know the story,” Richard says quietly, careful not to snap the china handle he's holding. “But Tho—Sergeant Barrow, he’s in charge there, for his home service.”

“This is your friend?” Richard nods. “A _sergeant_ , that’s certainly special. And in charge at _Downton_.” She stirs milk into her tea. “You’re sure we can’t meet him?”

“I promised I’d show him around,” Richard replies. “—maybe next time,” he adds, quieter. They sit at the table til quarter to five, when Richard pushes his chair back with a scrape and sits his cup in the sink. “I’ll wash up when I get back,” he says, kissing his mother on the cheek. She laughs and taps his chin fondly before he goes.

Minnie catches him at the door. “Going out on the eve of my wedding, Dick, really?”

Richard shrugs into his coat. “What’s there left to do?” he grins. “Braid your hair?”

She gives him a hard shove. “You’re _insufferable._ ” Richard just laughs, winding Thomas’ scarf round his neck as she folds her arms. “So, when are we going to meet him, anyway? _Your man_.”

Richard’s stomach drops. “He’s not—” His hand flexes around the brim of his hat and he peers down the hallway before answering. “Don’t joke about that, Min. I’m serious.”

Her face falls. “I know,” she says. “I shouldn’t have said it. I’m sorry.” She kicks her foot against the rug. “But it is like that, isn’t it? You and him?”

“Minnie…”

“I’m not a _child_ , Dick,” she says, jutting out her chin. “I’m getting married tomorrow. I know how to drive Dad’s car. I can count to twenty in French _and_ Italian. You don’t have to protect me.” Dick’s cheeks warm as she looks at him. Her expression softens, becoming less defiant, more sincere. “This isn’t something you _ever_ have to protect me from, okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” Richard replies, turning his hat in his hands. He ducks his head.

“Well?”

“… yes,” he admits. “It’s like that.”

A grin splits over Minnie’s face. “Good.” She throws her arms around him like she did when he arrived. “I’m glad,” she whispers into his neck, fierce. They break apart; she dabs at her eyes.

“Hey, no tears ‘til tomorrow,” Richard chides. Minnie laughs, watery and sweet.

“I’m just happy you’re happy,” she says, squeezing his elbow, and Richard drops a kiss in her hair before setting his hat on his head and opening the door. He turns around at the front gate; Minnie waves to him from the porch, still laughing. He waves back, then turns on his heel towards the station, heart beating Tipperary in his chest.

He hopes Thomas will forgive him for being late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [narrator voice] thomas did not forgive him for being late
> 
> some notes, not all on historical accuracy:
> 
> \- re richard's aunt's cherry tree, yes i watched 1917 while writing this  
> \- the "p" in richard's 6/11/17 letter is phillip  
> \- "perhaps gardening as a future career path?" is DIRECTLY inspired by ch. 6 of [likehandlingroses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/likehandlingroses/pseuds/likehandlingroses)' lovely au fic, [enter ellis](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21336151)!  
> \- thomas' christmas card is [real](https://clickamericana.com/wp-content/uploads/Antique-Christmas-card-from-1917-The-day-of-days-in-all-the-year.webp)! though poorly described, what even is that red flower. i'm australian our christmases are 40 degrees celsius  
> \- the telegram!!! i owe its formatting (which i absolutely botched) to [smithens](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smithens/pseuds/smithens)' excellent fic [one more night with you](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23936719). hatchard's is a bookshop on piccadilly but at this point in writing what is historical accuracy anymore but a fool's hope  
> \- yes jameson is just carson with a better wage  
> \- and of course the shakespeare! thomas and richard are trading lines from _much ado about nothing_ specifically 4.1.265-280, in which benedick declares love for beatrice, who replies with thomas' verse; she then asks benedick to eat his words, which he will not, for he protests (swears) he does love her. then she asks him to kill a dude! good one shakespeare!


	4. 16 February 1918

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m usually better at this,” he finishes, quieter. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
> 
> Dick gives him a sideways glance. “It’s me, isn’t it,” he says resignedly, stubbing out his cigarette.
> 
> “What?” Thomas almost drops his own. “No, it’s—”
> 
> “My dashing good looks,” Dick sighs, “I know. It’s a curse.”
> 
> “You—” Thomas can feel himself gaping and sees Dick trying not to smile. He drops the smoke then, grounds it beneath his heel. “You’re unbelievable,” he mutters, shaking his head, and Dick begins to laugh beside him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm so sorry for the longer-than-usual wait for this chapter! the world has been absolutely fucked and i've also had to return to work where i've been slammed with shifts, none of which adds up to a conducive writing mindframe or environment. that being said, when i finally did finish this chapter i only gave it a cursory read through because writing it felt a little like pulling teeth and i just wanted it published, so i'm sorry if it's not up to the usual standard of this fic. i may or may not come back later to fix it? probably not, but you never know.
> 
> warnings for discussions of war wounds and some mildly graphic sex at the end :-)

Thomas alights from the train, nervous. It’s just gone five, but is dark already this time of year, York painted in shadowy brushstrokes save for the lights burning on every corner. He twists his hands into his coat pockets. Richard isn’t on the platform so far as he can see; he checks his watch to make sure the train isn’t running early, but it’s 5:07—running late, then.

The night air is cool; Thomas is glad he took Sybil’s advice to wear a scarf. She’d wound it around his neck herself, back at Downton, tucked the ends inside his coat and patted the bulge in the fabric with a gentle hand.

“You have everything, then?” she’d said, stepping back and letting her hand fall away. Thomas would have laughed if her face weren’t so serious. The dried blood kissing the edge of her collar at her throat didn’t help.

“I’m not a patient,” he’d said instead, sounding crosser than he’d felt. It’s a habit he’s been trying to break, but here that’s near impossible—the house holds too many memories, few of them good. (A flash—cheated kisses in the dark; the lick of flame over paper; a candle in the family corridor, burning low and secret.)

Sybil had sighed at his comment; rubbed her forehead. There was dirt beneath her fingernails. “I know that,” she’d replied. “I didn’t mean it like that.” Like—what? A mother, a sister? She’s better than the two of them put together. “But I’m allowed to worry about you, all right? That _is_ what friends do, you know.”

The sincerity in her voice scalded him. He’d glanced over her shoulder to the open door and hallway behind them. “Quiet, or they’ll hear you.” Sybil frowned.

“I wish you wouldn’t—”

“What?”

“Do—” she’d waved her hands, “—that.” A sigh. “ _Say_ that.”

Thomas had looked at her then—proud, shoulders back, more than a head shorter than him but spine rifle-straight. She seemed more a lady than ever, and she’d hate it if he told her so. He tried to soften the words in his throat. “I wouldn’t if it weren’t true.”

Sybil sighed again; the tide rolling out. “I know,” she’d admitted quietly. “You could try to be nicer, maybe. They might understand then.”

“No, I couldn’t,” Thomas had said, shortly. He looked away. “And they wouldn’t.”

She was silent for a long moment—his watch ticked audibly in the quiet—then: “Cynic,” she’d said. Smiled, like that was that.

Thomas grinned. “Idealist,” he’d replied, making her laugh. The crinkles around her eyes as she did so made her look older and younger all at once. If I could, Thomas had thought, this would be it. Once, maybe, the thought would’ve made him sad. But now—

It’s 5:10. Thomas counts the seconds like he did in the trenches. Checks his watch again; still 5:10. Too fast, then. He closes his eyes to ground himself; listens to the wind as it whistles down the tracks.

A hand on his arm. He opens his eyes.

“Thomas.”

Dick is standing in front of him and he is smiling, and it is 5:11 in York in winter and Thomas feels warm all over. The hand falls away, a phantom bright patch burning where it rested.

He’s wearing the scarf.

“Thought you’d forgotten me,” Thomas makes himself say, and Dick laughs, ducks his head—Thomas memorises the movement, the moment, knows he will search for that dip in those shoulders in the dark in days to come—and the light, curving off one cheekbone, mouth still firmly tucked into a grin that reads like every curve in his handwriting Thomas has traced with a shaking hand.

“Never, Sergeant Barrow,” is the reply that comes, lilted up at the ends, and Thomas thought he’d remembered the sound but he’s been remembering wrong this whole time—wants to catch the words as they fall from Dick’s mouth, every burr and vowel.

“ _Now_ you respect the rank?” he laughs. Dick grins wider in the dark.

“My mother reminded me.”

“That’s alarming.” Dick turns so he’s side-by-side with Thomas, and together they exit the station. If Thomas were braver (the world, kinder) he would pull his hand from his pocket and—do what, he doesn’t know. Nudge Dick’s elbow. Brush invisible lint from the shoulder of his coat. Things that shouldn’t feel bold but are. Instead, he says, “you talk about me with your mother?” and leaves his hands where they are.

“All good things, don’t worry,” Dick replies, and lifts his own hand, easy as anything. Dusts off Thomas’ shoulder. “Lint,” he explains, and Thomas’ throat closes up. Dick’s hand goes back in his pocket.

“I need—”

“Cigarette?”

Thomas nods wordlessly. They stop at the lamppost. He takes off his right glove, pulls a smoke from his pack and offers one to Dick. He lights both their cigarettes, flame flickering.

“Sorry,” he says, after two—three—drags. “I’m usually—”

“It’s fine,” Dick placates.

“It’s really not,” Thomas bites out. Smokes a harsh lungful, blows it out onto the street. The knot in his gut loosens. “I’m usually better at this,” he finishes, quieter. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Dick gives him a sideways glance. “It’s me, isn’t it,” he says resignedly, stubbing out his cigarette.

“What?” Thomas almost drops his own. “No, it’s—”

“My dashing good looks,” Dick sighs, “I know. It’s a curse.”

“You—” Thomas can feel himself gaping and sees Dick trying not to smile. He drops the smoke then, grounds it beneath his heel. “You’re unbelievable,” he mutters, shaking his head, and Dick begins to laugh beside him.

Thomas takes his left hand from his pocket and shoves at Dick’s shoulder.

Easy as anything.

Dick doesn’t say _you’re welcome_ , and Thomas doesn’t say _thank you_. The words linger in the air anyway.

He replaces his glove, because it’s cold, and follows Dick further up the street. “Where are you taking me, anyway?” he asks, pulling his coat tighter. Dick slows his pace, ducks his head.

“Pubs don’t open til half six,” he says. “Thought we could take a walk til then.”

“Not much to see in the dark,” Thomas teases.

“There is if you know where to look,” Dick replies. They cross the street into dim-lit park. “The old city wall runs through here,” Dick points out. “You can follow it all the way round the city if you have the time.”

Thomas can make out the crumbled ramparts ahead. “I’m guessing we don’t.”

“It’s better in daylight anyway,” Dick says, voice apologetic. They keep walking, and pass a couple a little older than Thomas. The man’s right leg is missing and he’s leaning on the woman’s shoulder like a crutch. He nods at Thomas in his uniform.

“Shouldn’t have worn it,” Thomas says once they’ve passed the couple. He tugs at the khaki.

Dick’s voice is cautious and curious all at once when he asks, “why not?”

“Because it makes me look like something I’m not,” Thomas replies. He’s prickly again, and hates himself for it. He’s been with Dick, what—he checks his watch—not even twenty minutes? And he can’t seem to melt the ice in his veins, temper the barb of his tongue—all the things he should’ve done and more after not seeing Dick for almost two years; all the things Dick deserves.

“What aren’t you?” Dick asks. He doesn’t react at all to the bitterness in Thomas’ tone. “A soldier? You are. A hero? You _are_.”

“Don’t.”

“Thomas—”

“I said _don’t_.” Dick subsides and Thomas clenches his fists. A burst of laughter breaks across the park they’re stopped in—a man’s, deep and carefree. Thomas doesn’t know if he’s ever laughed like that. He looks at Dick, who is looking back the way they came—studies his side profile in the moonlight, the juts and curves of his jaw, lips, nose, brow. Feels his hands unclench themselves, something like shame rising in the back of his throat.

“I’m sorry,” Thomas says, again. Dick looks at him. “Can we talk about this later? You promised a proper tour.” An olive branch, and it only hurts a little to offer it.

Dick studies him for a long moment; Thomas wonders what he sees. “I remember promising something like that, yeah,” he says finally, taking the branch, bearing the weight of it and easing the tension from Thomas’ shoulders as he does so. He smiles, then, and it is contagious—Thomas’ lips catch the movement, their corners ticking up. Dick’s grin broadens. Thomas wants to kiss it.

They spend the next hour walking the waterfront. Dick laughs at Thomas’ pronunciation of _Ouse_ and laughs even harder when Thomas threatens to push him in. He points out the bridge he and Minnie used to throw stones from; the (sadly closed) chocolate works where he promises to buy Thomas a chocolate orange “ _next time_ ”; the church where his sister is getting married in the morning. Thomas has been to York before but not like this—has never been anywhere like this, he thinks, not ever.

It’s well after six by the time Dick turns them around to find a pub. The wind has picked up, and makes little victory signs down the centre of the river. Thomas tucks his chin into his scarf and notices Dick do the same. The blue fabric of Dick’s brings out his eyes even in this low light, and Thomas’ heart clenches when he remembers the card he’d enclosed with the gift, the borrowed words he’d had to use because the weight of what he wanted to say stuck to the roof of his mouth like caramel. Remembers how desperately he’d hoped that Dick would understand, that even miles and trains and households away he’d be able to see Thomas’ heart dissected on the paper with a scalpel of ink; would pick it up, careful, and keep its butterfly cut close. For days after sending the parcel he’d been on edge, jumping down even Mrs Hughes’ throat and not having the time to regret it because what had she ever ached for in her life so much it made her teeth rattle and her bones shake? What had she, what had any of them, ever chanced so recklessly for even the possibility of a hope come true? No, not come true— _made_ true, with hands of muscle and scar tissue, bleeding at the nails from dragging that hope into the light. Thomas had waited, and told only Sybil, and then they’d waited together, and then Dick’s telegram arrived with his own gift hot on its heels, and Thomas finally knew what Shakespeare meant.

He’s still lost in thought when Dick pulls them up outside a building lit with warm and merry light. “Been going here since forever,” he says, tipping his head at the door. “Take your fancy?”

Thomas glances in through the windows, quashing the stab of jealousy he feels at the permanence of Dick’s words. There’s a decent crowd inside, most of which are smiling or laughing or both. Their coats and scarves are off; everyone looks cosy and well-fed. It reminds him, uncomfortably, of the servants’ hall at Downton. He’d been outside looking in there, too.

Dick is waiting for his answer, so Thomas makes himself smile, concedes, “it’ll do,” and smiles for real when Dick rolls his eyes in response.

“Go on, sing its praises,” Dick chides gently, but he’s holding open the door for Thomas to walk through, and in the narrow space it’s entirely acceptable to brush up against Dick’s arm as he goes past; to linger, for the briefest of moments, in what would be an embrace were Dick to release the door and curl his hand round Thomas’ waist instead.

The moment passes; Thomas walks past; Dick follows and lets the door swing shut behind them.

“I’ll get us drinks,” Dick says, shucking his gloves already. “Grab us a table?” Thomas nods and weaves through the crowd to an empty booth on the back wall. He takes his coat off before sitting down, draping it over the edge of the seat. Hesitates, looking at his gloves, before removing them too and leaving the left in its fingerless kid leather on his knee out of sight.

Dick isn’t long in joining Thomas. He slides into the seat opposite, both their legs so long they knock knees under the table. The contact is like small twin sunbursts on Thomas’ skin under the khaki. He takes a long sip of his beer to hide the blush he’s sure stains his cheeks, but thinks Dick notices it anyway, because he ducks his head and grins into his hands the way Thomas remembers from the war.

“The menu’s nothing special,” Dick says apologetically. “Just chips and pies I’m pretty sure they get from the shop down the way. Didn’t think you’d mind.”

Thomas smiles and shakes his head. “I don’t. Used to eating later, anyway.”

“I know the feeling,” Dick laughs. He curls his hands—thumb and forefinger on each—around the rim of his glass. He has a small papercut on the tip of his left index finger—Thomas can see it from here. It’s browned; an old wound. Thomas wants to know how he got it, if it hurt. He’d ask to know everything about Dick if he were brave enough.

Instead, he says, “how’s Minnie feeling?” and is glad he did; Dick’s face lights up at the question and Thomas has to look away for a moment to catch his breath.

“Excited,” Dick replies, laughing. “And the last thing from nervous you’ve ever seen. I’m happy for her.”

“And the husband?”

Dick shrugs. “Seems a good sort. I’ve only met him once, when I was on leave.” _During the war_ , he doesn’t say. His smile falters slightly. “I’m only sorry he’s old enough to enlist. It seems too late to send new boys over.”

“America’s only just joined,” Thomas replies. “Germany’s on the back foot but they’re not done yet. They’ll need new men to see it through.”

Dick watches him closely. “You keep up with it all, then?”

 _Unwillingly_ , Thomas wants to say. _I work in a bloody convalescent home for soldiers of course I keep up with the war_ , he wants to say. _I’m sitting in a pub in York in my uniform with a wound I’ll have forever and you think I can forget about it?_

“Enough to get by,” is what he allows himself to reply. “You still don’t?”

Dick’s laugh is bitter and quiet. “Not if I can help it. Wasn’t even there for six months and I never want to think about it again.” As if on cue he grimaces; reaches back to rub at his shoulder. “Course this reminds me.”

Thomas’ mouth is dry. “How could it not?” he manages to croak out, and squeezes the hand on his knee, hard. Takes a steadying breath and lifts it up onto the table. “Least you don’t have to look at it every day.”

Dick drops his hand to the table where it rests, inches from Thomas’ own. He skirts his fingers forward slowly, so slowly they mightn’t be moving at all, and brushes them against the seam of glove and skin for just a moment before pulling back.

“It’s what it looks like,” Thomas says, forcing himself not to flinch; daring Dick to.

Dick looks back, gaze unwavering. “It looks like a war wound.”

“And?”

“And nothing.” He holds Thomas’ gaze. “I’m not going to say what you want me to say, Thomas. And I’m not going to think it. I could never.”

Thomas draws his hand back into his lap. “Even if it’s true?”

“Especially then.”

Thomas looks away first to hide the smile Dick has pulled from his gloom, unbidden. “You’re very open-minded for a royal valet, Mr Ellis.”

“You like it.”

Thomas raises his eyebrows. “Open-minded _and_ presumptuous,” he says. “What makes you think I do?”

“Oh, just something you wrote,” Dick says airily. He leans back in his seat; sips his beer. “Can’t quite remember it now.”

Thomas casts a quick glance around the pub. “I suppose I could remind you.”

“Oh, you suppose, do you?” Dick leans forward. “Am I to hang my hat on a hope?”

“You’re the valet,” Thomas replies. “Are you?” Dick’s eyes widen and he laughs, sudden and breathy.

“I missed you,” he says, soft and sincere—then blushes, like he hadn’t meant to say it aloud. Thomas draws a finger through the condensation on the table, willing his voice not to shake as he says:

“I missed you too.”

He splays his good hand on the table, palm up. _I am holding your hand_ , Thomas thinks, pressing his wrist into the wood, _the only way I know how_. He thinks Dick gets it, because he looks at it; bites his lip. Places his own hand palm down on the pine, inches from Thomas’. _I have you_ , that hand says, in a brightly lit booth in the back corner of a public house, in York in winter in the fifth year of the war, and compared to years and reams of paper between them the distance of two beer glasses and a table the length of a standard-issue rifle seems nothing at all.

They end up sharing food, which Dick insists on paying for. Thomas lets him. Dick talks about his sister some more, and does not pry, but Thomas tells him about his own family anyway. The bare bones version, really; it’s not a conversation he enjoys. But Dick listens, like he always does to Thomas in their letters, and the words come easier than they ever have.

“The thing is,” Dick says after another two beers between them, “Min knows.”

Thomas swallows. “About you?” he asks.

Dick grimaces. “Me… and you,” he replies. “Please don’t be mad, or worried, or—she won’t tell anyone, not even Jack, I swear.” He looks at his hands, curled together on the table. “She’s kept my secret long enough.”

Thomas takes a careful breath. “You know Sybil?” he says after a moment. Dick frowns a little but nods. “She… knows too.”

“You’re serious?” Thomas shrugs. “That’s… unexpected.”

“She has a good heart,” Thomas answers truthfully. He smiles. “And a romantic one. She actually helped pick out your scarf.”

Dick trails his fingers against the fabric where it’s draped over the seat next to him. His grin is splitting and bright. “Really? And here I thought your taste was simply exemplary.”

“How do you know it isn’t?” Thomas challenges. Dick’s gaze sweeps over him, hot and slow, and Thomas shivers despite the heat in the pub.

“Another thing you’ll have to show me, Sergeant Barrow,” Dick says, his voice low. He tips his head towards the door, despite the half-glass of beer sitting in front of him. “Coming?” he asks.

Thomas doesn’t need to be asked twice.

They step out into the frigid air. “What time’s your train?” Thomas checks his watch.

“Eight forty. Half an hour, roundabouts.” Dick nods and sets a pace quicker than what they’d walked before. He leads Thomas down three streets and this little side-lane that barely peeks out from between the bricks on either side; follows it about half-way down before ducking between two houses tilted together at the roofs like parentheses. They emerge onto another lane, a cul-de-sac that borders on what looks like a small church, with a low-slung stone wall choked by weeds and a line of trees just beyond the building. Thomas follows Dick over the wall and behind the chapel, where the street is blocked from view and they could almost be in the woods at Downton it’s that quiet and green. Dick laughs and his breath mists in the air between them. 

“Used to come here all the time as a kid,” he says. “Church hasn’t been used in years but it’s family-owned and they won’t sell to rebuild.”

Thomas grins at Dick in the dark. “I have a hard time imagining you as anything other than the golden child.”

“Well, compared to Minnie,” Dick allows. He edges closer to Thomas, nudging him up into the brickwork and bracketing him in. “I’m not perfect,” he breathes out, the words quiet and holy in this space. He reaches up a gentle, gloved hand, and strokes along Thomas’ cheekbone, the leather cool and like silk. Thomas feels his eyes flutter shut as everything else seems to awaken—his knees, weak and shaky; his shoulders, pressed back into the wall; the tremble of his hands as he sets them on Dick’s hips, pulling him in; the tension like a lump in his throat, pulsing in time with his heart.

“I’m bored by perfect,” Thomas murmurs, tilting his head to kiss the sliver of exposed skin between sleeve and glove. Dick shivers at the touch. “What—” another kiss, “—do you—” another, “want?” He bites gently at the leather stitching; Dick lets his hand be moved, lets Thomas reach up and slide the glove off agonisingly slow, kissing as he goes on the palm, the back of the hand; Dick’s knuckles, the pad of his thumb. Thomas sucks the latter into his mouth, just the tip; watches, even in the dim light, Dick’s pupils dilate and go dark. A cobweb of spit connects from his lips to Dick’s thumb when he pulls away; Dick groans, pushing forward into Thomas’ body, and Thomas can feel how hard he is; angles his own hips to press up against Dick, who lets his head fall into Thomas’ shoulder with a strangled sigh.

“Want you,” Dick answers, after a quiet so long Thomas forgets what he asked. He tugs down Thomas’ scarf and kisses at the tendons in his neck; the hinge of his jaw.

“I think I can handle that,” Thomas manages to say. He tugs his right glove off with his left, reaches between them and fumbles with the buttons on Dick’s trousers; laughs when he loses his grip, nudges Dick forward with his hips to get a better angle; gets them undone, palms at Dick through his pants; makes quick work of his own trousers and pulls out his cock, pumping it twice as Dick moans impatiently before reaching forward for Dick’s, pulling it from his pants already hard and wet; takes both their cocks in one hand and strokes, gently at first, a little clumsy because it’s been years—gets into a rhythm, Dick panting into his neck now, kissing beyond him; thrusts their hips together in time with his hand, turns his head to kiss the crown of Dick’s sweaty hair; is so close when Dick says “ _wait_ ” and “ _let me_ —”, and then he’s dropping to his knees on sacred ground and taking Thomas into his mouth like an echo of the trenches two years ago, and Thomas’ legs buckle and he grips a hand into Dick’s shoulder for balance, and the pressure is building in him and Thomas gasps out loud as quiet as he can and then Dick reaches back and presses just _so_ into the heat of him and Thomas is coming hot and fast into Dick’s mouth who swallows, coughs, swallows again. Pulls out, presses a kiss against Thomas’ wilting cock and it stings, just this side of too tender. Reaches down and finishes himself off, careful to spend himself on the grass and not his trousers. 

“Why’d you…” Thomas slurs, cut off by Dick staggering to his feet and pressing a salty, sloppy kiss against his mouth.

“Wanted to make it good for you,” he says, kissing Thomas again, sweeter this time. “Had to make up—” bites at Thomas’ lip, gently sucks the sting, “—for last time.” They kiss again for a long, drawn-out moment, noses and foreheads connecting, Thomas pulling Dick into his arms with his clean hand trying to memorise the feel of them pressed toe-to-toe, mouth-to-mouth. Wants to remember, later, that this was not a dream.

They pull apart eventually, and do each other’s trousers up. Thomas fixes Dick’s hair and Dick adjusts Thomas’ scarf. It is 8:26. Thomas has a train to catch.

They kiss again in the churchyard, because they can’t on the platform. Thomas presses a kiss to Dick’s jaw just by his ear; whispers him something that Thomas has never said aloud to anyone before.

Dick says it back.

They make it to the station at 8:38. The last train to Downton is sitting on the platform. Thomas takes off his glove and shakes Dick’s hand, skin to skin. “I’ll see you,” he says, and already the words taste sad. Dick smiles; lifts his right shoulder in a half-shrug.

“I’ll be watching,” he replies.

Thomas gets on the train.

He does not let himself wave goodbye. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some notes:
> 
> \- i started this chapter like YES I WILL ACCURATELY RESEARCH YORK so thomas and richard's adventures pre-pub are in fact geographically accurate! post-pub, however, i was at the end of my tether and honestly, the definition of fiction is creative licence, so? YOU get an abandoned churchyard to make out in and YOU get an abandoned churchyard to make out in  
> \- the "victory signs" thomas notices in the river is vernacular from ww2 but i am very small and i have no money so you can imagine the kind of stress i am under


	5. Interlude: Spring – Autumn 1918

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The year passes between sheafs of paper. Richard can no longer be circumspect; Thomas never pretended to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> today i offer you this, tomorrow who knows? i have many excuses, mainly being my utterly hideous work roster lately and my creeping anxiety about a second c*vid wave in my state but good news is! i have an end to this fic in sight! keen eyes may have already spotted the set chapter amount i updated a couple weeks ago; i'm fairly confident i will stick to it although then again there is a reason the only chaptered work i have ever completed on schedule was my thesis, so.
> 
> two things:  
> 1) this chapter is both later and shorter than i intended and i am sorry for how disjointed it may feel  
> 2) last night i watched eurovision song contest the story of fire saga so feel free to leave your reviews on that in the comments instead?
> 
> warnings for excessive use of the em dash and that little thing called the spanish flu

The year passes between sheafs of paper. Richard can no longer be circumspect; Thomas never pretended to be.

_T,_

_Two weeks without you and I can’t think straight. How did we make it two years? London is not at all far from Downton but it may as well be the other side of the world for how much I miss you—_

_—in my dreams we meet all over again. You in your corporal uniform, worn at the knees, mud on the hem—your hands so steady on the cigarette! how I wished to hold them!—smiling at me in the dark so warm I swear I felt it all over. What I could have said differently to make you laugh! What time we could have spent had you not been needed down the line—what you would have done had I kissed you then and there. In my dreams you kiss me back—_

_—I must be brief—how you make me blush! How I wish I could see you in person, and show you. How I wish we could do many things together, for longer than an evening at a time. I would spend a forever of evenings with you—_

_—my bright star, my darling! If anything good has come out of this wretchedness it was you—I know you feel the same—if we could only brave the last of it together—_

_—just know I am_

_Your admirer—_

_—your dearest—_

_—your—_

_—R_

Late July, now—nearing autumn. The leaves in York will soon turn gold. Thomas sends Richard a letter the last Friday of the month that makes his hands shake to read it. _I am tired of all this death_ , Richard writes back. _I don’t know how you do it, my darling. You amaze me every day. You say you do not know what will come of you after the war? The answer seems obvious to me. Think on it. There is no one I would so wholeheartedly entrust my life to._

August. Fresh rain. Richard spends two hours cleaning mud from his grace’s shoes. The wind is gunmetal cold and Richard hopes Downton keeps out the chill. Thomas writes in pointed script— _I’m no saint._ Richard remembers his Sunday school—replies, _I don’t want you to be_. The casualty list steeples higher. Richard has a headache that won’t go away; Thomas helps.

Minnie has a flat in London Richard visits when he can. She and Jack moved up just after the wedding; he’s been on the front three months now. Min makes thin chicken soup with bread Richard traded Mrs Wolfe his half-day for and they eat with elbows pressed together at a table too big for just the two of them. Minnie shows Richard Jack’s letters and he recognises the lies well enough. Assures her the Germans are on the back foot now; will write to Thomas later and tell him he did so, just to make him laugh.

On the twenty-third of September Minnie gets a letter that isn’t from Jack—they call it the Spanish flu. Richard’s little sister is nineteen years, two months, and twelve days old, and a war widow.

Four days later the Allies break the Hindenburg Line.

_T,_

_Found Keats_ _in C.H.’s library—I thought it fitting._

_Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw  
Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell  
Their sorrows—pale were the sweet lips I saw,  
Pale were the lips I kiss’d, and fair the form  
I floated with, about that melancholy storm._

_Love,_

_R_

On the tenth of November, Richard places a trunk call.

Thomas sounds almost breathless when he picks up. “I thought I told you to stay of trouble,” he says, the first words spoken between them since February. Richard laughs, closes his eyes. Pretends Thomas is right there next to him, not hours of green countryside away.

“You know me,” Richard replies. “Green and foolish as ever.”

“Thank goodness,” Thomas says, and Richard can hear his smile down the line. “How’s the household?”

“Excited,” Richard says, “—nervous, a little.”

Thomas’ voice gentles when he asks: “And how are you?”

“ _Nervous_ ,” Richard laughs. “A lot.” He leans against the table; imagines Thomas doing the same, the long lines of his body thin and angular in the dusk. “Is this really it?” he asks after a moment. “It’s over tomorrow, for good?”

Thomas exhales. “I think so,” he replies. “I hope so, I—it’s been so long I can hardly believe it. I’m afraid it won’t feel real.”

The words seize in Richard’s chest—“I thought I was the only one,” he says. “Sometimes it all feels like a dream, all of it—except you.”

A pause, then: “You feel like a dream most of all,” Thomas says softly.

“A good one, I hope?”

“You know the answer to that.” Richard tucks a smile into his collar.

“Maybe. Maybe I just want to hear you say it.”

“How you _tease_ , Mr Ellis…”

“Only you, Mr Barrow.” Richard swallows down the sudden lump in his throat. He brings the receiver close to his mouth; wishes he could kiss Thomas through the wires, the ridge of his nose, the bump on his chin. Wonders if there are shadows under his eyes still; wants to press his thumbs into them, wipe their heaviness away. “It’s always only you.”

“You flanneller,” Thomas replies, and it’s as if no time has passed at all—they are in the trench, side by side, far away the thudding of the guns, and Richard would fight in the war ten times over if it meant he could meet Thomas every time. If it meant he could hold him, as close as spun glass; kiss him, gentle, bold—beloved—the way he deserves to be kissed.

Richard does not say this down the line. He laughs, flirts back; rings off with words unsaid, but the precipice does not feel so treacherous as before, the chasm not so wide. The war will be over tomorrow.

They have time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> or do they? lol
> 
> notes, you know the drill:
> 
> \- the poems referenced in this fic are keats' bright star and on a dream, and siegfried sassoon's the death bed, which is also the title of [one of the lovely smithens' wonderful fics](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21723229) you should go read right now  
> \- the letter thomas sends richard in july is about william's death. press f to pay respects  
> \- my catholic ass out here thinking saints were a generic christian thing but apparently not?? anywho


	6. Autumn 1918 – Winter 1919

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Good,” Sybil says, knocking their knees together—blue skirt against brown khaki. “I don’t know if I could do this alone.”
> 
> “You could,” Thomas says, and he doesn’t doubt it for a second, “—but you don’t have to,” and he knocks her knees right back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello late updates, my old friend. i hope this chapter will suffice <3
> 
> warnings for brief (very brief) discussion of war/body horror; if you wish to skip, stop reading at _“You saw a lot of men die in the war,” she begins_ and pick back up at _“I think,” he says, after a long moment avoiding Daisy’s gaze_. 
> 
> i have played around a little with the 1919 timeline. the flu arrives earlier at downton, for reasons. sybil/branson does not happen, for reasons. thomas continues to be dramatic, for reasons.
> 
>  **edit 03/09:** i have been a fool and forgot thomas' promotion to lance sergeant. thank you Hobbit_Kate for the gentle reminder!

Tuesday morning finds Thomas up at dawn. He sneaks out the servant’s door, though by rights he isn’t doing anything wrong—habit, he supposes, as he ducks his head to avoid Mrs Patmore’s gaze. There’s a low mist hanging over the grounds that disperses the early sunlight; Thomas tilts his face up, lets the dampness coat his cheeks, revels in it—that feeling of dewy possibility, because it is November twelfth, 1918, and the war is done for good.

He finds Sybil on the bench they’ve taken to, by the gnarled and leaning oak that’s stood longer than Downton. She’s dressed in her nurse’s uniform already, cap clenched between her hands in her lap, twisting the thin cotton. He sits beside her, two hand widths apart on the bench, because it is dawn and no one is up and she is a nurse and he a lance sergeant but they are also what they were before, always, and first footmen don’t sit on benches with great ladies of the house—or at least, they leave two hand widths of space between them. 

“Did you sleep?” Thomas asks, laying a gentle hand over Sybil’s to stop her fidgeting. She releases the cap at his touch, creased beyond rescue, and splays her hands out on her knees. There are small cuts across the knuckles from washing them so much; Thomas has the same.

“If I lie and say yes, will you believe me?” she replies. 

“You know I never believe anything I’m told,” Thomas says, nudging at her shoulder until he finds a smile. It’s small, and gone quickly, but he takes it as a victory anyway. Besides—he thinks he knows what’s the matter. “Branson isn’t still bothering you?”

Sybil laughs a little, shakes her head. Wipes at her eyes. “No,” she says, hesitant, “—well, yes. But he isn’t a bother, really, it’s just all so strange, and now that the war’s over he wants an answer and I just—I don’t know what to say to him.”

“All right,” Thomas says, gentle, like he speaks to Isis when no one’s around. “You’re not alone, you know. A lot of people don’t know how they feel half the time.” He thinks of Dick as he says it; smiles, a little, into his hands. “I certainly don’t.”

Sybil looks at him at that—catches the tail end of his smile and laughs again, though the sound is wet with tears. “Now that _I_ don’t believe,” she says, nudging his shoulder even as she has to wipe her eyes again. “You always seem so certain. About… _him_ , about everything.”

“I am now,” Thomas allows. “About him, at least. Definitely not everything else, but—it took time getting there, you know.”

“But I’ve _had_ time,” Sybil replies. “And I’m no more certain than I was the first day he asked.” And it’s true—Thomas remembers, not too long after their becoming friends, Sybil approaching him with the most consternated look on her face, telling him what Branson had just told her. She’d wrung her hands that night, too, just as she is doing now.

He takes her hand in his to stop her.

“What are you so afraid of?” he asks softly, and with a sigh she tips her forehead into his shoulder; he rests his free hand in her hair, stroking gently. Were anyone to see them together Thomas is sure he would be sent packing, lance sergeant's uniform or not—but Sybil is more important to him than all that, and the realisation sends a jolt of warmth straight through his chest. It is strange, having people to care about who care for him in return—but war turned the whole world upside down, and perhaps it is only strange because he thinks it so. Perhaps this is just what love is.

“I don’t know my own heart as you do,” Sybil replies, after a time. Her voice is slightly muffled by Thomas’ collar but she makes no move to pull away. “As he wants me to. As I should. I don’t know if I want him or if I don’t want him or—”

“What _do_ you want?” Thomas interrupts, and at his words Sybil looks up.

“I just said I don’t know.”

“Not who,” Thomas replies. “What.”

She pulls away from him properly; dabs at her eyes with her cap then stuffs it into her pocket. Sybil looks at her hands, then at Thomas, then at the green lawn rolled out in front of them like the finest palace carpet. “I want to do this,” she says at last, staring into the mist. “I want to help people. To be free of—all this—” she waves her hand at the abbey behind them, “—and just _be_.”

The words strike a chord in Thomas and he squeezes Sybil’s hand before speaking. “Who says you can’t?” he asks. She snorts.

“Are you kidding? Only everyone.”

“I don’t count, do I?”

Sybil sighs; meets Thomas’ gaze. “Of course you do. _Of course_ you do, Thomas, but—the war’s over. I’m out of options. Except for—”

“He is not your only option,” Thomas says firmly. “The world is changing. You know that, far better than me.”

Sybil hesitates at his words; nods, and squeezes his hand back. “And what of you? Do you have… options?”

Thomas turns the question over in his mind. Thinks of his half-baked idea of the black market, conjured up so long ago—thinks of the money he has saved, the gamble it would be—the way he doesn’t know how Dick would react, should he tell him. Knows he could never go back into service, not after so long out, almost free—but thinks of Dick’s words, too, his unassuming and utterly thorough confidence in Thomas’ abilities— _There is no one I would so wholeheartedly entrust my life to._ Thomas is far from deserving of Dick’s praise—but thinks he could be, one day, if he wanted. If he tried.

“Yes,” he says after a moment. “I do.”

“Good,” Sybil says, knocking their knees together—blue skirt against brown khaki. “I don’t know if I could do this alone.”

“You could,” Thomas says, and he doesn’t doubt it for a second, “—but you don’t have to,” and he knocks her knees right back.

_Dick,_

_We talked only yesterday and still I miss you already. It feels strange, writing to you as though nothing as changed, though of course everything has. Do you realise we have never known each other outside of war? You have never even seen me without my uniform. I hope, when the time comes, I do not disappoint._

_Your words from July have stayed with me. I must admit I have liked medic work more than I ever thought I could—back in ‘14, it was a means to the end of escaping the abbey, but it has brought me far greater solace than service ever did. And of course, it brought me to you._

_I fear, however, I haven’t the faintest idea where to go from here. I am far from properly trained for any kind of civilian medical work, and I imagine one could only undertake such training in London for a considerable fee. It would be more of a gamble than I have ever made in my life—though I’m sure I can think of many other attractions in London to make it worthwhile. Or perhaps just the one._

_If you have any advice, I would be gladdened to hear it. If you have none, I would be gladdened to hear from you anyway._

_Fondly,_

_T_

_P.S. Sybil remains undecided about her romantic prospects and today called me ‘certain’ in mine. Know that I am; know I have never been surer._

The convalescent home closes slowly, but the days still feel as though they’re slipping through Thomas’ fingers. For all his confidence talking to Sybil he feels as lost as he’s ever been—he hadn’t been lying to Dick, all those letters ago, when he said service was all he’s ever known. It had been all right, during the war, not knowing where he would end up after, because it was war and no one ever really knew what was to come—but now it’s peacetime, Thomas looking down the barrel of a life out on his own, and it terrifies him.

Carson breathing down his neck half the time doesn’t help.

The butler corners him one afternoon, Thomas having begged off the time to post a letter in the village. It burns a hole in his breast pocket as he stares the older man down, and Thomas thinks, slightly hysterically, what would happen were Carson to read it. Something more than firing, that’s for sure.

“Ah, Thomas,” Carson says, the way he always says Thomas’ name, curled cruelly at the ends.

“It’s Lance Sergeant Barrow, sir,” Thomas replies, reflexively. Carson’s eyebrows reach his hairline. “Until the hospital closes down.”

“Which will be soon, I hope.” He stares Thomas down like he did the day he hired him. Thomas has been through a war and out the other side and still that stare makes him small. “And then you’ll be off, won’t you.” It isn’t a question; Thomas grits his teeth behind his lips and forces himself to smile.

“That’s the idea,” he says, “—sir.” Carson humphs and walks away, and Thomas—Thomas would punch the goddamn wall if his hand wasn’t already throbbing from the winter chill. The other hand, maybe, but—

“Thomas?” The voice stills him and he turns to see Daisy hovering in the doorway. “I mean—Lance Sergeant Barrow,” she corrects hastily, and Thomas uncurls his fist.

“Daisy,” he says, smiling for real this time to let her know he isn’t annoyed. “Something you need?” he asks.

Daisy twists her hands into her apron and shrugs, just a little. “No,” she says. “Only—is it true, what Mr Carson said? You’re leaving soon?”

“Not like I can stay,” Thomas says, and at that her face gives this soft, sad crumple and she moves as if to hug him but catches herself at the last moment on the doorjamb. Rocks back on her heels and clasps her hands together, instead.

“Well, I’ll miss you,” she says after a moment. “You’ve always been kind to me and made me laugh and—it won’t be the same here, without you and—” She stops herself before she can say the name, but Thomas hears it anyway. Catches his eye on the black armband wrapped around her sleeve.

“Thank you, Daisy,” he replies, a little awkwardly. “You’ve always been kind to me as well.”

“Course I have,” Daisy laughs. “You’re my friend, aren’t you?” She laughs again, light and airy, and heads back into the kitchen before Thomas can think of a reply.

_T,_

_Certainty is a fine trait you and I both share. Tell Sybil she has time; I have seen what rushing into marriage does to a young woman, and I would not wish it upon anyone. A dreary start to this letter, I know, but Minnie is not coping well. Mother has come to stay in the city awhile to keep her company, and were I in any other profession I would join them. Jameson is strict as ever with leave, and I envy your chance to gamble—and I do so hope that you take it. Truthfully, dear, I cannot think of a profession that would suit you more. I believe St Bart’s is offering affordable training for RAMC veterans, and it is surely not the only hospital to do so. There is also the distinct advantage of not being five counties away. Think of the money saved on postage! One can only imagine what one could get up to in a city such as London… I suppose I could play tour guide just once more, if you promise to behave._

_Whether in your uniform or out of it, I am always_

_Your admirer,_

_R_

Christmas comes to Downton with all the fanfare of four years lost to war. The home has closed for good, now, but still—Thomas lingers.

Carson wants him gone and Dick wants him in London and Thomas—Thomas doesn’t know what he wants, except as insidious and looming as Downton can be it is all he has known for years—ten if one counts the war. Ten years feels almost a lifetime, more than a third of Thomas’ own, and he has always been scared of newness, vulnerable and wrong-footed as it makes him feel. To leave Downton for a career and a life unknown—Thomas has never been brave, and he’s not so sure as Dick that he can start now.

So he stays. Serves as footman for the holiday dinners and balls, keeps out from underfoot of Carson and Mrs Patmore, smokes alone in the courtyard when Miss O’Brien is attending Lady Grantham, all the better to avoid unwanted questions.

In the servant’s hall, Daisy sits beside him, during one of her rare moments of rest. “Do you remember,” she asks, “when you showed me the grizzly bear?” Thomas laughs; stubs out his cigarette.

“I remember you stepping on my toes,” he replies, tempering the insult in his words so they come out teasing. He chances a glance at the piano behind them; sparkling clean, dusted under Mrs Hughes’ watchful eye, but doubtless as out of tune as Lady Edith’s singing voice. Daisy follows his gaze, and sighs.

“You saw a lot of men die in the war,” she begins. “Do you think it’s better for them, when they’re gone?”

Thomas thinks of the butchery he saw on the front. Abattoir trenches, no man’s land graveyards. Once, he had to push a sergeant’s eyeball back into its socket and cradled a corporal’s intestines, still warm, like offal, in his hands and in his lap til the ambulance came. What he heard of William’s death seemed a mercy.

“I think,” he says, after a long moment avoiding Daisy’s gaze, “that he wouldn’t want you to dwell on it. But remember how he was, before.” He looks at the piano again and it could be 1912.

Daisy sniffles, but doesn’t cry, and Thomas loves her just a little for that.

And then it is 1919, and St Bart’s wants a down payment, and Sybil holds his hand as he writes out the cheque and then he holds hers as she pens a matching one. Last week—last year—Dick had written a solution to their problem of accommodation— _Mother goes home in the new year. Minnie will cherish the company._ Sybil has not told the family of her plan, and Thomas has told only Dick. His last days at Downton feel a dream. _For so long you were a fantasy_ , he writes Dick— _I am real, I am yours,_ he receives in reply. _I will see you soon._

Thomas packs his bag a week before their train. Sybil still has not told anyone. His life—twenty-eight years, a faded uniform, Shakespeare’s _Tempest_ —fits neatly inside a suitcase. Thomas closes and latches the lid.

Three days later, the flu comes to Downton.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- did st bart's offer affordable training for ramc veterans? did this include medical training for women? i really don't know. i tried researching but google was being stubborn and kept showing me results for during wwi, instead of after. suspend disbelief, etc. etc.  
> \- i thought for sure cheques were common around this time but i googled it and now i'm not so sure but didn't want to change it so  
> \- thomas and the tempest comes from likehandlingroses' darling thomas & sybil fic, [if birds fly](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23347714)


	7. Winter 1919

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The flu stalks London as surely as Kipling's tigers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *taps mic* this thing still on?
> 
> hello hello sorry for the 4 month hiatus from this fic but life, you know? to say thank u for u guys sticking with this fic for so long, u can have the mature rating upped to explicit, as a treat! (no but seriously, thank u <3)
> 
> warnings for THE SPANISH FLU!!!!!!!!!, graphic descriptions of war and childbirth (skippable if you don't read the paragraph that starts with _The flu stalks London as surely as Kipling's tigers._ ), richard being hideously in love, a horrifically incorrect use of semi-colons and sex babey
> 
>  **edit 06/01:** this chapter was posted with hardly any editing and i just can't stomach that as a human being so i have gone through and fixed a couple of things, as well as added a couple extra warnings above. nothing major has been altered

**1620 DOWNTON POST**

**TO ELLIS CLARENCE HOUSE WESTMINSTER LONDON SW1A**

FLU AT DOWNTON STOP AM WELL BUT DEP DELAYED STOP HAVE HEARD STORIES FROM LDN STOP TELL ME YOU ARE WELL

**1745 HATCHARDS PICCADILLY NIGHT SERVICE**

**TO BARROW DOWNTON ABBEY YO51**

ALL WELL HERE BUT MUCH AGGRIEVED BY NEWS STOP WILL TELL M NOT TO WORRY BUT CANNOT DO SAME STOP WISH YOU AND S HERE ALREADY BUT WILL SETTLE FOR YOUR SAFETY STOP MISS YOU WRITE ASAP

**0714 DOWNTON POST**

**TO ELLIS CLARENCE HOUSE WESTMINSTER LONDON SW1A**

AM FINE DO NOT WORRY STOP WILL WRITE WHEN I CAN

**0752 HATCHARDS PICCADILLY**

**TO BARROW DOWNTON ABBEY YO51**

WILL HOLD YOU TO THAT MR BARROW

**1537 DOWNTON POST**

**TO ELLIS CLARENCE HOUSE WESTMINSTER LONDON SW1A**

GLADLY MR ELLIS

Thomas’ letter arrives three days from his first telegram. Richard snatches it from the doorman with as much restraint as he can muster and beats an excuse back up to his quarters, foregoing breakfast in favour of his nauseated heart. He rips open the envelope the moment his door is closed, discarding the paper on the crisply-folded sheets, and reads.

_Dick,_

_Forgive my brevity. Mr Carson has taken ill and there are few things that run smoothly in this place without him. Lady G also unwell. They do not tell us so, but I fear her situation is dire. You can hear the coughing from the stairs._

_Sybil and I have taken up our duties once again, of a sort. Our suitcases lie packed and ready beneath our beds, but I cannot see us leaving while the flu remains, and it seems to linger like flies in a bloodied trench. I know I do not have to tell you how wretched I feel over the delay, for I know you feel it too. This place has been the bane of half my life, and it seems a cruel joke to be trapped here once more, after coming so close to escape. Yet I do not give up hope just yet. How could I, when I know what—who—awaits me the other side?_

_Stay safe in London, Dick. I mean it. _

_T_

Richard presses his thumb into that signature so firmly the paper crinkles. He sits down on his freshly-made bed and reads Thomas’ words again, heart beating the tattoo of their rhythm, until the clatter of breakfast ending downstairs hoists him to his feet.

The flu stalks London as surely as Kipling’s tigers. Clarence House shutters its windows and locks its doors and Richard calls Minnie to make sure she does the same. He is almost—almost—glad Thomas is stuck in Yorkshire, away from the press of the city, the smog, the darkness—the way the buildings seem to pastry-fold in on each other, bent in half beneath the clouded rolling pin sky as if to say, _what more must we endure?_ What more, beyond war; beyond death, disease, pain; suffering and grief; wives without husbands and mothers without sons, men with limbs blown off and women with cold stone where their hearts should be, those beautiful and beating bloodied vessels calcified by the guns and the horror of the new world, where women can don pants and write novels and rule countries and still die in childbed, slick red between their thighs; otherwise cut open like shelled Germans, insides gleaming as the finest rubies, while their husbands lay in unmarked French graves overgrown with cornflower blue, or gamble their lives and wives away in smoke-filled London rooms, while the Spanish chokehold tightens, tightens, tightens its grip, and there is no time nor space for rest, there is only war, and still the war; and Richard’s shoulder pains him and it is the smallest price to pay yet he will pay it the rest of his life, and all lives after that. He is almost thankful Thomas is not here to see the bare-bellied ugliness of the snaking Thames, the festering rot of the river, the open wound of Chelsea and Kensington and Shoreditch, green with infection, with envy for life before the mortar and machine gun—almost.

Almost, because Richard would carry Thomas into the filth, the muck, the chaos—into this sardine city coated in the oil-slick of sickness, into the dirt, into the mud and the blood and the war, and the war—into all of it, and worse, for a kiss. One kiss. One gritty, aching, fevered kiss. One perfect, perfect, perfect kiss.

Richard has learned many things from Thomas. How to staunch a bullet wound. How to fix the longcase clock in Clarence House’s library. How to say _I love you_ in as many different words as there are in the English language. How to suck a cock like it’s a holy relic. 

How to be unapologetic, even to yourself. Even when everyone wants you not to be. Even when it’s your job not to be.

In his room, at night, Richard touches himself and thinks: I would ruin everything for a kiss. When he spills into his fist, wet-hot-sticky-glistening, and says to the ceiling, “I’m not sorry,” what he means is _my heart is cracked open and Thomas has the glue_ , and, _what’s another war after all we’ve seen_ , and, _London feels empty without him_ , and, _can’t we have this one thing, after everything? Let me have this; let me have him._

To Thomas, Richard writes, _stay as long as they need you_ (come back to me), _I’ll be here_ (I miss you). So many years apart, now, yet these few months are an agony, and Richard has never claimed to be brave, nor selfless, nor any of the things Thomas thinks him to be—the things he was told he had to be. Bit by bit, he’s learning.

It is a month since Thomas’ telegram that finds Richard dressing the duke while his grace reads the paper, too impatient to wait for breakfast. “Hm,” his grace says as Richard adjusts his cufflinks. “Terrible business, I’m afraid.”

“Sir?”

The duke folds the paper and lays it on the dresser. “Another taken before her time by this wretched flu. The future Lady Grantham, I believe.” Richard’s hands still in their busywork. “But you’re a York man, aren’t you, Ellis? I fear Downton has yet to see the worst of it. Terrible business,” he continues, “terrible business.”

Richard steps back, tucking his shaking hands out of sight. “Your grace,” he says.

“Yes, yes,” the duke replies, and the dismissal has barely reached the roaring in Richard’s ears before he is out the door, down the stairs, along the hallway— _duck to miss the breakfast tray, can’t stop, why is everything so loud_ —past the kitchen, through the servant’s hall, out into the courtyard that is silently, mercifully empty, and Richard takes big gulps of the chilly February air until the urge to vomit has passed, until the spots disappear from his vision and he can hear the rumble of the traffic over the sound of his beating heart. _I fear Downton has yet to see the worst of it. I fear Downton has yet to see the worst of it. I fear Downton has yet to see the worst of it. I fear Downton—_

“Mr Ellis?” He turns; it’s Agatha, the kitchen maid, her cheeks and nose red with cold. “This just came for you.” He takes the telegram from her offered hand and forces a smile in thanks, making sure she’s back inside the house before opening it.

**0623 DOWNTON POST**

**TO ELLIS CLARENCE HOUSE WESTMINSTER LONDON SW1A**

PLEASE DON’T DO ANYTHING RASH

That’s it. Richard turns the telegram over as if there’ll be another message on the back. How can that be it? _I fear Downton has yet to see the worst of it._ _Please don’t do anything rash. I fear Downton has yet to see the worst of it. Please—_

Richard crumples the telegram in his fist. He will wait for Mr Jameson to return from breakfast. He can; he must. _Please don’t do anything rash_. It’s like Thomas doesn’t know him at all.

Or, more likely, all too well.

He makes the last train to Downton, but only just. It is winter-dark, Yorkshire-dark on the platform, and Richard is not wearing the shoes for the walk to the abbey and his bag is already pulling at his bum shoulder but Thomas is a flame, mere miles from him now, closer than they’ve been in over a year, and Richard—Richard has always been pulled to his light, since that very first day they met. Thomas, smoking, the cherry of his cigarette the only bright spot amidst the pouring French rain; the marble of his jaw as he leaned in, out of the shadow, and Richard saw eyes greyer than London skies, a mouth hooked around a smirk, cheekbones like some kind of picture star, bizarrely, miraculously, halfway across the world from Hollywood in the same dugout as Richard, living in the same place Richard grew up in, looking like everything Richard’s ever dreamed of and more, and then he opened his mouth and said, “don’t die,” and Richard was lost before he even knew what he was looking for.

The walk is both longer and shorter than Richard feared, and it has just gone half-ten when he finds himself in the courtyard so alike, yet so different to Clarence House. The door is wider, the stoop lower. The pavers are mossy and slick with fresh rain.

Richard rings the bell before he can second-guess himself. He grips his hat tightly in both hands. _Please don’t do anything rash_ , Thomas said. “I’m sorry,” Richard whispers to the wood of the closed door, and then it opens, well-oiled with nary a creak, and he is staring face to face at a girl younger than Minnie but with his sister’s same dark hair and firm mouth—now pressed firmly into a frown as the maid looks at Richard, who fears he is moments away from tearing the brim of his hat in two.

“Who’re you?” she asks suddenly, so suddenly that Richard jumps, and he takes a second to swallow down his nerves before replying.

“Mr Ellis,” he says. The maid stares. “I’m here for Mr Barrow, if he’s around?”

“That’s Sergeant Barrow,” she replies, and Richard blinks. “He’s just in the hall. You wait here then,” she continues, forcing Richard back a step into the courtyard. “If he wants to see you he’ll come to you.” And she closes the door in his face.

Well. That could have gone better. Richard sets his case down by the door and rests his hat on top. A light drop of rain lands on his nose, then another on his cheek. Richard tilts his head up to this sky he knows so well, and that is how Thomas finds him, hair and face and coat damp from the rain, eyes closed beneath the moon and hands in pockets, gripping the first letter Thomas ever sent him, a talisman he’d retrieved from under his pillow before leaving London that morning.

“Dick,” says a voice, and Richard opens his eyes. Thomas is in the doorway, framed by golden butter-light. He steps forward and forward again and closes the door behind him.

“Hello,” Richard says hopelessly. He takes his hands from his pockets.

“What…” Thomas’ mouth gapes open, and he steps closer again, now an arm’s length from Richard who has not seen a sight more beautiful in his life. “I told you not to do anything stupid!”

“I believe you said rash.”

“Jesus Christ,” Thomas swears. He presses his hands to his face. “What were you thinking?” he asks through his fingers, before letting them fall away. “Have you actually gone mad?”

Richard’s mouth is dry. “That is a definite possibility,” he manages to say. “I had to come, Thomas. I had to see you, I had to make sure—”

“I’m all right?” Thomas shakes his head. “I _am_ , Dick. I told you I am. You are—” he pauses, frustrated, then walks right up into Richard’s space and jabs him in the chest, “—unbelievable.” He punctuates the word with another jab. Richard shrugs, spreads his hands.

“So I’ve been told,” he says quietly, and Thomas laughs, a quiet, choking, unbidden sound. There is no one else outside but Richard guides them to a shadowed corner anyway, and takes Thomas’ face in his hands. The rain is still coming down, harder, now, and this close Richard can see there are drops clinging to Thomas’ lashes, to the bow of his upper lip. “I had to see you,” he repeats simply. Thomas is looking right at him—he feels bare, stripped beneath that London-sky gaze.

“Well, all right then,” Thomas says, and Richard kisses him.

It is still raining when they break apart. “You’d best come in,” Thomas says, stepping back and back again. Richard raises his eyebrows.

“Should I?”

“You’re a friend from the war, just passing through,” Thomas replies. “It’s true enough.”

“ _Friend_ , am I?” Thomas rolls his eyes.

“Unbelievable.”

“So you’ve said.”

“Insufferable.”

“I’ve been called worse.”

Thomas huffs, and steps in close once more, pressing the pad of his thumb to Richard’s lower lip. “Downright maddening,” he says, and it comes out a whisper, and Richard wants to kiss him all over.

“To bed, Mr Barrow,” Richard says, watching closely as Thomas’ eyes flutter closed. He kisses the thumb still pressed against his mouth.

“To bed,” Thomas agrees, voice low, and trails his thumb to Richard’s chin and down to his Adam’s apple. Richard swallows against the feel of it, and follows Thomas inside.

The maid who answered the door is the only person to be seen when they enter. She frowns again at Richard, who suppresses the urge to make a face back. “Daisy,” Thomas says, smoothly stepping between them, “Mr Ellis is just stopping by for the night. Would it be too much trouble to ask for a plate?”

The maid—Daisy—shrugs. “It’ll be cold,” she warns, leaving them for the kitchen. She returns a moment later with some cold cuts and boiled potatoes. “Goodnight, Sergeant Barrow,” she smiles. It falls away when she looks to Richard. “Mr Ellis.”

“Did I do something?” Richard asks once they’re alone. Thomas laughs.

“Who, Daisy? She’s just like that.”

“Friend of yours, then.” Thomas laughs again, but it’s softer this time.

“Something like that,” he replies. They make idle conversation while Richard finishes his meal; Thomas takes the empty plate and deposits it in the kitchen. After, Richard follows Thomas up the narrow flight of stairs to the servants’ quarters. Thomas’ room (“shoebox,” he says, rolling his eyes) is down the end to the left. “This one’s spare,” Thomas says as he opens the door across from his. “It’s no royal household, but.”

“I suppose I’ll manage.” Glancing up and down the corridor, Richard tugs Thomas inside the room and presses him carefully into the closed door. “Besides,” he whispers, “the royal household doesn’t have you.”

Thomas’ face does a complicated frown-into-a-smile-into-something-Richard-can’t-name. His hands go around Richard’s shoulders, coming to rest at the nape of his neck. “This is a bad idea,” he starts to say, but Richard is already kissing him. It’s better than in the courtyard—better than Richard remembers it being, but then maybe the months have washed the memory away. Thomas’ mouth is hot and vibrant and moving against his, and he tastes like cigarettes and winter rain, his hands hot brands against what little of Richard’s skin he can touch. Richard breaks away from the kiss only to press his mouth down the strong line of Thomas’ jaw, that marbled fucking masterpiece the V&A would weep to own, and Thomas’ head thumps quietly back against the door when Richard reaches his neck, pulling at the collar of his shirt to expose the delicate bone. “Off, off,” Thomas says then, and Richard pulls back to let Thomas unbutton himself and hurries to do the same, their clothes ending up somewhere on the floor and God forbid what Mr Jameson would say about it but Richard cannot bring himself to care at the sight of Thomas in his shirtsleeves, pale arms wiry with muscle, black hair slicked with oil and rain, mouth red from kissing Richard who falls into him again, untucks Thomas’ undershirt from his trousers and runs his hands up the planes of Thomas’ stomach, the startlingly gentle divots of his hips, the stiff peaks of his nipples that make Thomas groan into Richard’s mouth when he teases them. Richard tugs the undershirt up and Thomas gets the hint, shedding it entirely, and his chest is heaving and Richard, Richard did that, and now he has to kiss Thomas again, and it’s almost gentle, Richard’s whole body trembling with the feel of it, the weight of this moment, and Thomas runs his hands up and down Richard’s bare arms as if to say _I have you_ , or maybe he says it out loud—Richard can’t tell the difference. Thomas’ hands go to Richard’s trousers and he fumbles with the clasp, laughs silent and open-mouthed against Richard’s neck, until he gets it open and gets his hand on Richard’s cock and neither one of them is laughing and Richard could come in an instant, so taut and wanting as he is. But he doesn’t want to—knows that this will be over, the moment he does, the moment they both do, and he _needs_ this to last—takes Thomas’ hand and kisses the wetness from it, pulls away and takes off his undershirt, his trousers—God he’s still wearing his _socks_ —watching hungrily as Thomas does the same, and he cannot pull his eyes from the sight of Thomas’ thighs, pale, dotted with hair; the bones of his knees, miraculous muscle! The curve of his ankles, and, raising his gaze, his cock, flushed and red, and they’ve done this twice in the dark now but Richard could kick himself for not turning on the light sooner because Thomas Barrow is beautiful and holy and laid out before him like Richard never let himself imagine, and he is sweaty and pale and leaking and Richard feels no better, feels undone by that stare, that _mouth_ , those big hands and oh, _oh_ , Thomas is taking Richard’s cock in his gloved hand and the leather against the sensitive skin is this side of too much and Richard bites his lip so hard he knows he’s drawn blood. It’s all he can do to reach down, brush Thomas’ hand with his own before wrapping around his cock and all it takes is one, two, _three_ strokes between them and Richard is coming right after Thomas, cry muffled in the curve of Thomas’ neck, and it could be hours before he lifts his head to find Thomas already looking at him, softly, wondrously, before he pulls Richard in with his clean hand and kisses him like something precious. Richard presses into it, a seal into hot wax. They pull apart when Richard has to breathe.

“Still mad I came to Downton, Mr Barrow?” Richard whispers as they stand naked nose to nose. Thomas scoffs quietly.

“You’ll need to do better than that for me to forgive you, Mr Ellis,” he replies, hands coming to rest at the curve of Richard’s spine.

“In _that_ case,” Richard begins, tugging Thomas towards the bed, but stops at the look on Thomas’ face. “Or not.”

Thomas curves a hand around Richard’s cheek, apologetic. “We can’t, Dick,” he says quietly. “As much as I wish otherwise. We’ve risked enough, and I—” He stops, swallows heavily. Richard tracks the movement of his throat. “We need to be careful,” he starts again, “because I can’t lose you.” Thomas stands on his toes to press a kiss to Richard’s forehead. Richard’s smiling when he sinks back to his heels. “What?” Thomas laughs, as loudly as either one of them dare.

Richard places a careful hand over Thomas’ where it is still steady against his cheek. “Nothing,” he says. “I love you.”

Thomas runs his thumb down Richard’s cheekbone. He is smiling, so softly Richard might break open. “I’m glad you decided to be rash,” he replies. “I love you too.”

Richard leaves in the early morning, before most of the staff is out of bed. Daisy is in the kitchen, and gives Richard a cloth-wrapped cheese sandwich for the journey. “Thank you, Daisy,” he says, flummoxed, and she rolls her eyes in a gesture so Thomas-like Richard almost hugs her.

“Sybil will be sorry she missed you,” Thomas says as they stand together in the dawn light of the yard.

“I’m sorry too,” Richard says. “But it’s better this way.”

“What’s this?” Thomas laughs. “Richard Ellis, finally circumspect?”

“You’re a good teacher,” Richard grins back. Thomas’ face falls, slightly, and he huffs out a sigh.

“I wish I wasn’t,” he admits. “I wish I could just kiss you.”

 _Then kiss me_ , Richard might have said once. Or leaned in and done it himself. But they are at Downton, it is the morning of what looks to be a crisp winter’s day, and the abbey stirs awake around them. This is Thomas’ home, for better or for worse. And Richard had to grow up someday.

“I’ll have to take a raincheck,” is what he says instead, and it’s worth it for the wan smile that splits Thomas’ overcast face with the sun. “London, when everything’s over. A kiss and then some, Mr Barrow.”

Thomas smiles, and reaches between them to straighten Richard’s tie. “Someone’s sure of himself.”

“Never been surer.”

“Hm.” Thomas releases him; takes a step back. “When everything’s over,” he echoes, grey eyes sparkling. “I suppose I can wait that long.”

“What’s a few more months?” Richard replies.

The sun breaks the horizon behind them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the “future lady of grantham” is lavinia, her death moved up the timeline to make julian fellowes roll in his grave. telegram style is once again butchered from [smithens](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smithens/pseuds/smithens), u da best x
> 
> as always you can find me on twitter, now @[svnsvstvrk](https://twitter.com/svnsvstvrk)!

**Author's Note:**

> some notes on historical accuracy:
> 
> \- the first conscripted troops didn't arrive on the front until late 1916 but if downton can inexplicably place matthew and william in the same regiment _and_ send them on a reconnaissance mission together despite the truly laughable disparity in their ranks then i can push that date back  
> \- is it feasible that a footman from clarence house would one day be valet to the king? google couldn't tell me so i say yes for sure  
> \- “pep talk” did not come into use as a popular term until a decade later in 1926. however, i have a permit to do what i want. let the gays flirt anachronistically!  
> \- the stokes mortar was invented during wwi allowing the weapon to be carried and fired by a single mortarman! the mortar itself had been in use since the fifteenth century but was extremely cumbersome and had in fact fallen out of fashion by the beginning of the eighteenth century before being revived in the twentieth; soldiers accidentally firing their weapons, however, is an historical phenomenon common to all time periods


End file.
